Kiro (kiro)

Output

AGENTS.md                          # canonical entry-point pointer body (written by sync, shared path)
.kiro/steering/<name>.md           # one per rule (inclusion: always, or fileMatch + fileMatchPattern from globs)
.kiro/skills/<name>/SKILL.md       # one per skill, Kiro's native skill-folder surface (+ bundled scripts/, references/, assets/)
.kiro/agents/<name>.md             # one per agent, Kiro's native agent-profile surface
.kiro/hooks/<name>.json            # one per hook, Kiro's native hook surface
.kiro/settings/mcp.json            # when MCP entries exist
.kiroignore                        # when ignore entries exist

AWS Kiro loads steering files whose YAML frontmatter must be the first content in the file. The adapter maps rules onto Kiro's inclusion modes: unscoped rules are always, globbed rules become fileMatch with fileMatchPattern. Kiro also reads the root AGENTS.md (always included), which carries the shared pointer body.

Skills are native too, not a steering-file convention: one folder per skill at .kiro/skills/<name>/SKILL.md ("Workspace skills (.kiro/skills/)"). This is the tree Kiro's own skill picker globs (skill://.kiro/skills/*/SKILL.md) and the standard Agent Skills layout (name + description frontmatter), which this adapter shares byte-for-byte with the .agents/skills/ render ten other targets already produce. Bundled sibling assets (scripts/, references/, assets/) copy alongside SKILL.md.

A prior version of this adapter flattened skills into .kiro/steering/skill-<name>.md with inclusion: auto, which dropped bundled assets entirely and never reached Kiro's skill picker (#642). sync sweeps a stale file of that shape left behind for a current skill name, the same convention agents already use below.

Kiro's steering docs separately confirm auto and manual inclusion modes exist; this adapter has no rule shape that needs either.

Agents are native custom agents, not a steering-file convention: one YAML-frontmatter Markdown file per agent at .kiro/agents/<name>.md, the tree Kiro's agent picker reads. description (falls back to the agent name) and model pass through. The canonical spec name remains the safe filename, while x-kiro.name sets Kiro's optional display name and survives import.

Kiro's documented agent schema also carries tools, mcpServers, permissions, hooks, keyboardShortcut, and welcomeMessage; only tools has an agnostic-ai spec equivalent.

That page documents Kiro's own tools vocabulary (category tags read/write/shell/web/subagent/knowledge/todo_list, @server_name, @server_name/tool_name, @mcp, @builtin, *). /docs/tools/, updated 2026-08-21 versus configuration-reference's 2026-08-04, tables the same field as read/write/shell/web/subagent/spec/context instead, folding knowledge into a new context bundle (disclose_context/introspect/knowledge) and dropping todo_list. The two pages disagree and neither says which one the shipping product follows, so this section keeps citing configuration-reference rather than guessing.

It makes no functional difference here, since both pages agree on the four categories a spec's generic tools list actually translates onto:

(deduplicated when a spec lists more than one value that maps to the same category.)

Kiro's built-in-tools catalog documents each category as a bundle rather than a single tool, so this widens access beyond a single Claude-style name on its own: write also covers delete_file, so declaring only Edit grants delete too, and web covers both fetch and search, so either WebFetch or WebSearch alone grants both.

A tools value outside agnostic-ai's Read/Write/Edit/Bash/Grep/Glob/WebFetch/WebSearch set has no confirmed Kiro equivalent; it is dropped rather than written unconfirmed and surfaces a coverage note, while any name in the same list that does translate still emits (the same unconfirmed-vocabulary failure class Kilo Code and Augment still hit, since their own tool vocabularies remain undocumented).

Set x-kiro.tools to bypass the translation table with Kiro's own vocabulary directly, or x-kiro.mcpServers, x-kiro.permissions, x-kiro.hooks, x-kiro.keyboardShortcut, or x-kiro.welcomeMessage for fields with no agnostic-ai equivalent. Arbitrary x-kiro keys always pass through, and x-kiro.tools always wins outright over the translated form.

A prior version of this adapter flattened agents into .kiro/steering/agent-<name>.md with inclusion: manual, which never reached the agent picker; sync sweeps a stale file of that shape left over from an older sync.

Hooks are native too: one JSON file per hook spec, {"version": "v1", "hooks": [{name, trigger, matcher, action, timeout, enabled, description}]}. event becomes trigger, passed through verbatim. command (string or list) becomes action: {"type": "command", "command": ...}, one entry per command sharing the file when the spec lists several, name suffixed -2, -3, ... to stay unique.

disabled: true writes "enabled": false; the enabled default needs no key. The spec's generic description field (free-form documentation) now reaches the file too; the vendor lists the matching hooks[].description as "Documentation only".

Every entry marshals from a map rather than a fixed set of fields, so arbitrary x-kiro keys pass through as well: confirm ("Ask for confirmation before a Stop command hook runs", taking question, options (id/label/run each), and an optional confirmCommand) has no agnostic-ai spec equivalent and is only reachable this way. x-kiro.action accepts {"type": "agent", "prompt": ...} or {"type": "command", "command": ...}, written in spec YAML as x-kiro.action: {type: agent, prompt: ...} or {type: command, command: ...}. A valid explicit action needs no generic command and replaces the whole fallback command list with one native action. Invalid actions fail sync instead of running a fallback.

Explicit timeout: 0 disables the command timeout; omission retains Kiro's 60-second default. Before #642, description and confirm were unreachable at any layer, including x-kiro, because the prior fixed-struct shape had no route for a key it did not declare.

Unlike Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, and Cursor, stashed hook scripts under .agnostic-ai/scripts/ do not materialize into .kiro/hooks/: that directory is where Kiro looks for hook definitions, not scripts.

MCP servers write to .kiro/settings/mcp.json under the standard mcpServers map, the workspace tier on Kiro's own configuration page ("Workspace Level: .kiro/settings/mcp.json"). A local server carries command plus optional args and env; a remote server carries url plus optional headers and env.

Both tables also document disabled ("Whether the server is disabled (default: false)"), which passes through under that literal name, unlike Claude Code and Cursor which have no file-based equivalent. They also document autoApprove ("Tool names to auto-approve without prompting", "*" for all) and disabledTools ("Tool names to omit when calling the Agent").

A remote server adds an oauth object, {clientId, clientSecret, redirectUri, clientMetadataUrl, oauthScopes}, and the top-level oauthScopes fallback. oauth.oauthScopes wins when both are set; an explicitly empty oauthScopes: [] emits as written, since the vendor makes that the documented remedy for scope errors. All four were unreachable before #634, top-level or namespaced.

Kiro's oauth is not Claude Code's, so each target maps only the sub-keys its own vendor documents. See disabled support by target.

Ignore specs emit as .kiroignore in the project root, plain gitignore syntax: "To exclude files in a specific project, create a .kiroignore file in your project root (or any subdirectory) and add patterns for files you want to exclude" and ".kiroignore uses standard gitignore syntax" (kiro.dev/docs/kiroignore, target-audit 2026-09-11, #728).

Two vendor caveats gate how far the file reaches, and neither is something sync can set: the IDE reads ignore filenames from its own Agent Ignore Files setting, so .kiroignore has to be in the kiroAgent.agentIgnoreFiles array before the IDE honors it (the vendor suggests [".gitignore", ".kiroignore"]). CLI V3 applies it to content- and filename-search results only rather than across every agent tool.

Multiple specs concatenate. Override via outputs.kiro.ignore-file.

Config keys

Import

agnostic-ai import kiro reverses the Kiro layout. Native agent and skill trees import first. Then the flat .kiro/steering/ files (frontmatter-first inclusion: block, filename prefix picks the kind) fill in rules plus anything a pre-native sync still left flattened there:

The native rows run after the legacy steering sweep, so a name present under both wins on the native copy.

Some data is lossy on round-trip. Kiro's emit cannot carry it, so the reconstructed spec drops it without changing Kiro's output:

• A rule's source-layout scope collapses into an equivalent globs:.
• A legacy flattened steering agent or skill keeps only its body. That flattened form never carried a description, model, or bundled sibling assets in the first place.

Verify

1. Install Kiro from kiro.dev.
2. Check the tree: ls AGENTS.md .kiro/steering/ .kiro/skills/ .kiro/agents/ .kiro/hooks/ .kiro/settings/mcp.json .kiroignore, head -2 .kiro/steering/*.md .kiro/skills/*/SKILL.md .kiro/agents/*.md (frontmatter first, no leading blank lines), python -m json.tool .kiro/settings/mcp.json > /dev/null, and python -m json.tool .kiro/hooks/*.json > /dev/null for each hook file.
3. Open the project; the steering panel lists every rule file with its inclusion mode and no parse warnings, the skill picker lists every .kiro/skills/<name>/ folder, and the agent picker lists every .kiro/agents/<name>.md profile.
4. Trigger a hook's trigger event (e.g. save a file for PostFileSave); the configured command runs with no schema warning.