Kiro CLI Workflows

While this workshop focuses on Kiro IDE, Kiro CLI offers powerful capabilities for developers who prefer terminal-based workflows or need to integrate Kiro into automated pipelines.

Why Use the CLI?

The CLI excels at running autonomous agent sessions — long-running tasks where Kiro works independently with minimal intervention:

Complex refactoring across multiple files
Codebase-wide migrations
Extended debugging sessions
Multi-step feature implementation

Getting Started with CLI

Install Kiro CLI

Download from kiro.dev — the CLI is included with the IDE installation, or can be installed separately.
Authenticate
Terminal window
```
kiro auth login
```
This opens a browser for AWS Builder ID authentication.
Start a chat session
Terminal window
```
kiro chat
```
Opens an interactive chat session in your terminal.
Run autonomous tasks
Terminal window
```
kiro agent "Refactor the authentication module to use JWT tokens"
```
Starts an autonomous agent that works through the task independently.

Model Selection in CLI

Just like the IDE, you can select models in the CLI:

# Use a specific model
kiro chat --model claude-opus-4

# Use open weight models for cost efficiency
kiro chat --model qwen3-coder-next

Code Intelligence

The CLI includes powerful code analysis features:

# Analyse codebase structure
kiro analyze

# Generate documentation
kiro docs generate

# Find related code
kiro search "authentication flow"

Learn more in the Code Intelligence documentation.

Combining IDE and CLI

A powerful workflow combines both tools:

Plan in IDE — Use Spec mode to generate requirements and design
Execute via CLI — Run autonomous agents for implementation
Review in IDE — Use inline chat and checkpointing for refinement