CLI changelog

This release focuses on portability and getting back to work faster. Export any conversation to share or archive, label terminal windows so you know which session is where, and start a session at the reasoning level you need. Your model and effort choices now stick around on their own, so there's no extra step to make a preference the default.

Save a conversation to share with a teammate, attach to a ticket, or feed into another tool. Run /transcript save to export the full chat as markdown, plaintext, or JSON. The --plain and --json flags also switch the rendered transcript format inline, so you can read it the way you want without leaving the pager. Learn more ->

Keep track of which session is running where. Use /title to set or clear the terminal window title so each window has a meaningful label. Turn it on from /settings display → Terminal title. Learn more ->

Start a session at the reasoning depth the task calls for. The new --effort flag for kiro-cli chat sets the initial effort level (low, medium, high, xhigh, max) when you launch, so quick lookups stay fast and complex work gets the deeper reasoning it needs from the first prompt. Learn more ->

/model and /effort now remember your choices automatically. Switch models or change effort once and Kiro carries that preference into future sessions, so you no longer need to run /model set-current-as-default to make a selection stick. Learn more ->

This release makes Kiro's work more transparent and more autonomous. Watch the agent reason in real time with thinking display, let subagent pipelines review and revise their own work before handing it back, and control how output renders with new display settings. Message and shell output rendering are also noticeably faster during streaming.

See how the agent works through a problem as it happens. Thinking display streams the model's reasoning in real time, so you can follow its logic, catch a wrong turn early, and understand why it chose an approach. It's enabled by default. Toggle it from /settings > Display > Show thinking - the change applies to your next chat session. Learn more ->

Subagent pipelines can now revise their own work. A reviewer stage can send a task back to the implementer for changes and loop until the work meets the bar, all before results return to you. This turns multi-agent pipelines into self-correcting workflows for cases like code review and refactoring. Learn more ->

Run /settings display to control how Kiro renders output. Toggle streaming animations, decorative ASCII art, and icons versus text-only indicators to match your preference or accessibility needs. Changes take effect immediately, with no restart required. Learn more ->

This release gives you finer control over how conversations flow and how the model thinks. Rewind to any earlier prompt to explore a different path, set reasoning effort per model, and manage all your preferences from one unified settings menu. Workspace initialization is also 88% faster.

Jump back to any earlier prompt in a conversation and continue from that point in a new session. Use /rewind to pick a turn, then branch off without losing your original thread. This is useful when you want to explore an alternative approach or undo a direction the agent took without starting over from scratch. Learn more ->

Control how much thinking the model does with /effort. Choose from five levels: low, medium, high, xhigh, and max. Lower effort means faster, cheaper responses for straightforward tasks; higher effort gives the model more room to reason through complex problems. Learn more ->

Access theme customization, keyboard shortcuts, and terminal configuration from a single /settings command. Run /settings theme to change colors, /settings keybindings to view shortcuts, or /settings terminal to enable Shift+Enter / Option+Enter for multi-line input. The existing /theme command still works as a shortcut. Learn more ->

This release gives you more control over which MCP servers you can connect to, where Kiro lives, and how the TUI responds to your keystrokes.

Connect to HTTP-based MCP servers that don't support Dynamic Client Registration by setting a pre-registered oauth.clientId in your MCP config. This unlocks services like Slack, GitHub, and Figma that require manual app registration for OAuth, so you can use their MCP servers without running your own proxy. Learn more ->

Point Kiro at a different directory for global agents, prompts, skills, steering, settings, and sessions by setting KIRO_HOME before launching. This is handy when you manage dotfiles across machines, keep work and personal profiles separate, or need to isolate Kiro's state for containerized environments. Learn more ->

Remap the cancel, close-menu, and quit actions in the V2 TUI to keys that fit your muscle memory. If Ctrl+C and Esc conflict with your tmux prefix or terminal bindings, you can now pick different keys instead of working around the defaults. Learn more ->

Shell commands the agent runs can now stream output through two additional channels. Write to $AGENT_DISPLAY_OUT to show rich progress in the TUI without bloating the agent's context, and write to $AGENT_CONTEXT_OUT to surface lines in the tool result's agent_notes field. Stdout keeps working as before. Learn more ->

This release adds adaptive thinking support so model reasoning carries across turns in a conversation, giving you more coherent answers as context builds. It also fixes a silent failure in subagent tool dispatch when MCP servers update their tool specs mid-execution.

Kiro CLI now preserves model reasoning across multi-turn conversations. Thought content from earlier turns stays available to the model on subsequent turns, so follow-up answers stay aligned with the reasoning that produced previous responses. You get more coherent multi-step workflows without re-explaining context.

This release focuses on keeping you in flow: shell output streams as it happens, Tool Search loads MCP tools on demand so your context window stays clear, and skills are now invokable as slash commands. This release also adds device flow authentication for remote environments, RHEL support, and several rendering and stability fixes.

Shell command output now streams to the terminal line by line as it runs, instead of buffering until the process completes. Long-running commands like builds, test suites, and deployments show progress immediately, so you can follow along and catch issues early. Learn more ->

Tool Search loads MCP tools on demand instead of sending every definition with each request, keeping your context window clear when you have many MCP servers configured. Enable it with kiro-cli settings toolSearch.enabled true. Learn more ->

Skills defined in .kiro/skills/ are now available as `/skill-name` slash commands. Type / and the skill name to invoke it directly, giving you quick access to reusable agent instructions without switching agents or copying instructions into your prompt. Learn more ->

Sign in with Google or GitHub from SSH sessions, containers, and cloud workspaces without port forwarding. The CLI displays a URL and one-time code you enter in any browser — same flow as Builder ID and IAM Identity Center. Learn more ->

Kiro CLI's terminal UI now runs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). If you're working in enterprise Linux environments, you get the same full-featured terminal UI experience available on other Linux distributions, macOS, and Windows. Learn more ->

Kiro CLI 2.0 expands platform support to Windows, introduces headless mode for CI/CD automation, graduates the terminal UI from experimental to the default experience, and adds new capabilities across subagents, hooks, and MCP configuration.

Kiro CLI now runs natively on Windows 11. Windows users can now build using the same agentic coding experience available on macOS and Linux — terminal UI, headless mode, custom agents, and MCP servers all included. Install from PowerShell and background auto-updates keep you current. Learn more ->

Run Kiro CLI non-interactively in CI/CD pipelines, automation scripts, and environments without a browser. Authenticate with an API key via the KIRO_API_KEY environment variable, pass a prompt with --no-interactive, and Kiro executes it end-to-end. Use --trust-all-tools or --trust-tools to grant tool permissions upfront. API key authentication is available for Pro, Pro+, and Power subscribers, and enterprise admins can control API key generation through governance settings. Learn more ->

The terminal UI is now the default chat interface. It gives you syntax-highlighted markdown, interactive overlay panels, visual tool progress, and a full set of keyboard shortcuts. Use the crew monitor (Ctrl+G) to track subagent activity in real time, /theme to customize colors, /copy for clipboard access over SSH, /transcript to review conversation history in your pager, /guide to switch to the onboarding agent, and /spawn to run parallel agent sessions. Subagents now support task dependencies — for example, analyze a codebase first, then refactor modules, then run tests, with each step waiting for the previous one to finish while independent steps run in parallel. Switch back to the classic interface anytime with --classic or kiro-cli settings chat.ui "classic". Learn more ->

This release brings an experimental refreshed terminal UI behind the --tui flag. The new experience features a live status bar, rich markdown rendering with syntax-highlighted code blocks, interactive panels for managing context and sessions, and contextual overlays for tools and help. You also get /chat new for starting fresh conversations without restarting the CLI, and --list-models for quickly checking which models are available.

Get a richer chat experience with the new TUI. Agent responses render with full markdown, syntax-highlighted code blocks, tables, and nested formatting. Tool calls show descriptive titles and progress indicators as they run. Interactive panels let you browse context, switch sessions, and manage tools without leaving the terminal. The classic interface remains the default, so you can switch back at any time. Try it with kiro-cli --tui or set it permanently with kiro-cli settings chat.ui "tui". Learn more ->

This release streamlines how you create and manage agents. Describe what you need and Kiro CLI generates your agent config, use the new session settings tool to tweak preferences mid-conversation without editing config files, and control exactly which shell commands you trust with granular scoped permissions.

The /agent create command now defaults to AI-assisted mode, merging the previous /agent generate workflow into a single command. Describe what you want your agent to do and Kiro generates the agent configuration for you. Pass --manual to use the previous editor-based creation flow. You can also specify creation arguments directly at invocation time to bypass the interactive menu entirely. Learn more ->

When Kiro asks to use a tool, you now get an interactive picker to choose how broadly to trust it. For shell commands, select from tiered scopes — trust the exact command, the command with any arguments, or the base command with wildcards. For read and write tools, scope trust to specific file paths, the containing directory, or the entire tool. The picker adapts to each action, skipping tiers that aren't meaningful, and handles chained shell commands automatically. Learn more ->

You can now ask the agent to adjust settings temporarily within your current session — change model preferences, toggle features, or tweak behavior without modifying your config files. All session overrides apply in-memory and reset automatically when the session ends. Learn more ->

This release adds inline file references with @path syntax, dynamic model selection with tab completion, and estimated token usage visibility for tools. It also brings automatic skill loading, improved agent editing, and enhanced context management.

Include file contents or directory trees directly in your messages using @path syntax. Content is expanded inline before sending, avoiding tool calls and saving tokens. Type @src/main.rs to inject file contents, or @src/ to show a directory tree. Tab completion and syntax highlighting help you reference files quickly. Learn more ->

The /model command now supports direct selection with tab completion and fuzzy matching. Type /model clau<Tab> to see matching models, or /model claude-opus-4.6 to switch immediately. Ghost text hints appear as you type. Learn more ->

The /tools command now displays estimated token counts for each tool and totals per origin, helping you understand context window usage from MCP servers and native tools. Learn more ->