Skills for Kiro

What is Kiro?

Kiro is an agentic IDE from AWS built around spec-driven development — it turns prompts into specs, plans, and code. Kiro reads persistent project guidance from steering files (markdown under .kiro/steering/), which is where a SKILL.md's instructions live once adapted.

How to install a skill on Kiro

• Find a skill in the catalog or filter by your use case.
• Clone or download the skill folder.
• Save its SKILL.md body as a steering file — e.g. .kiro/steering/<slug>.md (confirm the current path in the Kiro docs).
• Kiro applies steering files as standing context across the project.
• Keep steering files focused; use Kiro's inclusion settings to scope when each applies.

Compatibility notes

Kiro reads steering files as markdown guidance, not SKILL.md frontmatter — so a skill's body ports directly while the YAML header is ignored. A few patterns to watch:

• allowed-tools: and other agent-specific frontmatter keys are ignored — Kiro uses its own agent tooling.
• Kiro is spec-driven, so guidance-style skills (conventions, standards, review checklists) fit its steering model especially well.
• Use Kiro's steering inclusion modes (always / conditional) to control when a skill applies rather than loading everything at once.