title: "Amazon Kiro Specs & Hooks — AI Coding Guide" description: "Use Kiro specs and hooks to guide AI in Amazon Kiro IDE." slug: "kiro-specs-hooks" category: "skills" updatedAt: "2026-03-05T00:00:00.000Z" faqs:

q: "What are Kiro Hooks?" a: "Hooks are automated lifecycle actions that run at specific points — like on file save or before commit. They let Kiro automatically run tests, update docs, or check code quality."

AI Skills & Rules

2026

Updated Mar 5, 20265 min read

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Amazon Kiro — Specs & Hooks

Overview

Amazon Kiro is AWS's AI-powered IDE that supports two unique mechanisms for guiding AI behavior:

Specs: Structured requirements documents that define what to build
Hooks: Automated lifecycle actions triggered by events like file save or commit

Kiro Specs

Specs are structured documents that translate high-level requirements into implementation tasks:

# Feature: User Authentication

## Requirements
- Users can sign up with email and password
- Passwords must be hashed with bcrypt
- Sessions stored in Redis with 24-hour TTL

## Design
- Use NextAuth.js with Credentials provider
- PostgreSQL for user storage
- Rate limit login to 5 attempts per minute

## Tasks
- [ ] Create users table migration
- [ ] Implement NextAuth configuration
- [ ] Add login/signup API routes
- [ ] Create auth middleware

Place specs in .kiro/specs/ directory.

Kiro Hooks

Hooks automate actions in your development workflow:

{
  "hooks": {
    "on-save": {
      "action": "run-tests",
      "glob": "**/*.test.ts"
    },
    "pre-commit": {
      "action": "lint-check",
      "command": "npm run lint"
    },
    "on-file-create": {
      "action": "update-docs",
      "description": "Update API docs when new route files are created",
      "glob": "src/app/api/**/*.ts"
    }
  }
}

MCP Integration

Kiro supports MCP servers through .kiro/mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "supabase": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["supabase-mcp-server"],
      "env": { "SUPABASE_URL": "${SUPABASE_URL}" }
    }
  }
}

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