Table of Contents

Use Spec Kitty in Kiro

Tier: partial — bootstrap-only surface in 3.2. Promote to supported once the full /spec-kitty.* set is verified end-to-end. Citation (accessed 2026-06-03): https://kiro.dev/docs

Prerequisites

  • Spec Kitty CLI installed. See Install Spec Kitty.
  • Project initialized for this harness: 
    spec-kitty init --ai kiro
  • Kiro installed and configured. Follow the Kiro documentation for installation and authentication.

Partial-tier note

Kiro is the rebrand-target of Amazon Q. In 3.2 the Spec Kitty installer ships a bootstrap-only surface for Kiro — the directory layout is in place, but the full /spec-kitty.* command set is not yet integration-tested end-to-end against this harness. Expect feature parity with Amazon Q at the prompt-file level; verify each command before relying on it for production missions.

The promotion criteria (partial → supported) are maintained in docs/development/3-2-harness-research-method.md §6.

Plugin-install classification

Kiro is prompt-only for Spec Kitty 3.3 plugin-install planning. Current public Kiro docs describe steering files, hooks, MCP configuration, and prompt surfaces, but do not document a plugin or Powers bundle primitive that Spec Kitty can install as a packaged command-skill equivalent.

Spec Kitty therefore keeps Kiro out of #1635 plugin-install scope until an upstream package primitive is documented and smoke-tested. Continue using the .kiro/prompts/ surface for bootstrap coverage.

Where Spec Kitty installs files

Per the supported-harnesses matrix, Kiro uses the prompt-file mechanism. Spec Kitty installs:

  • Directory: .kiro/prompts/
  • Files: the spec-kitty.* prompt set (specify, plan, tasks, implement, review, accept, merge, dashboard, status, charter, analyze, research).

Canonical invocation

Inside Kiro, prompts are invoked via the host's prompt-discovery convention. The current best guess (mirroring Amazon Q) is:

/spec-kitty.specify "<one-line mission description>"
/spec-kitty.plan
/spec-kitty.tasks
/spec-kitty.implement WP01

If Kiro's current syntax differs, consult the host docs at https://kiro.dev/docs for the canonical prompt invocation.

Worked example

  1. From your project root, launch Kiro.
  2. At the prompt, attempt: 
    /spec-kitty.specify "a hello world page"
  3. If the prompt is recognized, Spec Kitty's interview prompts appear — answer them inline and pick a kebab-case slug.
  4. If it is not recognized, fall back to running Spec Kitty from another configured harness (Claude Code, OpenCode, Cursor, etc.) — the on-disk artifacts under kitty-specs/ are harness-agnostic.

Troubleshooting

  • /spec-kitty.* prompts do not appear. Run spec-kitty agent config sync from the repo root. This rewrites .kiro/prompts/ from the canonical source templates. Restart Kiro.

  • Profile not loading. Run inside Kiro:

    /ad-hoc-profile-load researcher-robbie

    Use the profile id from the work-package frontmatter.

Where to learn more about Kiro

Authoritative documentation: https://kiro.dev/docs (accessed 2026-06-03).

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