Powers

A power is a one-click bundle that makes the Kiro agent good at a specific technology. Inside is a POWER.md steering file telling the agent which tools it now has and when to reach for them, an MCP server configuration, and optionally extra steering or hooks.

What is a power?

The useful way to picture it is downloading a city pack into a navigation app before a trip: maps, traffic rules, and local quirks installed together and activated when you enter the city. A Stripe power arrives knowing what Stripe’s tools do, what the agent should ask before touching a payment object, and which conventions your code should follow.

The three parts each do a distinct job. The MCP configuration supplies the tools. The POWER.md supplies the judgment: when to call them, when not to, what a good result looks like. Extra steering and hooks, when a power ships them, cover the surrounding conventions.

Why it exists

MCP on its own has two rough edges.

The first is setup. Connecting a vendor’s server means finding it, writing JSON, wiring credentials, and then discovering that the agent uses the tools clumsily because nothing told it how. A power does all four steps in one install.

The second is context cost. Every connected MCP server contributes tool definitions to the agent’s context on every turn, whether or not the conversation is about that vendor. Ten always-on servers is a standing tax you pay to ask about a CSS bug. Powers load on demand when your conversation matches, so specialized tools stay dormant until they are relevant. That on-demand loading is the technical win, and it is why powers exist as a separate idea rather than as a nicer installer for MCP.

How it works

Installing. Powers install with one click from the marketplace, or from a GitHub repository, or from a local folder. Kiro’s configuration documentation lists the global powers directory as ~/.kiro/powers/. Since IDE v1.0.437 (September 1, 2026), powers synced from cloud configuration also show up in the installed list.

The launch lineup. Powers were introduced on December 3, 2025. The launch partners were Stripe, Supabase, Figma, Neon, Netlify, Datadog, Dynatrace, Postman, the Strands SDK, and AWS Aurora. Community powers exist on GitHub, and you can build your own with the same three ingredients.

The Agent Plugin format. Since IDE v1.0.288 (August 7, 2026), powers are packaged in the open Agent Plugin format, a vendor-neutral standard for portable agent extensions. Practically, that means a power is not a Kiro-only artifact, and it installs from a local folder or a GitHub URL rather than only from a marketplace.

Building one. The minimum viable power is a POWER.md and an MCP server configuration. Write the POWER.md the way you would write steering: name the tools, say when each is the right choice, and explain the reasoning rather than only the rule. Then add hooks if the technology has a chore attached to it, such as regenerating a client when a schema changes.

Common mistakes

Installing without reading. A power configures both instructions and external tools for an agent that can edit your code. The fix: open the POWER.md and the MCP configuration before installing, exactly as you would skim a shell script before piping it to bash. Check what credentials it asks for and where they go.

Using a power where a steering file would do. If the knowledge is about your own conventions and no external tool is involved, you want steering, not a bundle. The fix: powers are for technologies with tools attached; steering is for what your team decided.

Installing five powers for a project that uses one. The on-demand loading helps, but every installed power is still something that can activate, and more surface means more ways to be surprised. The fix: install for the stack you actually work in, and remove the ones you stopped using.

Assuming the power is current. A bundle written against last year’s API will confidently tell the agent about tools that changed. The fix: check when it was last updated, and prefer vendor-maintained powers for vendor products.

Permissions and safety

Powers are covered by the power capability in Kiro’s permission model, and the MCP servers they configure are covered by mcp. The ranking is the same as everywhere: deny beats ask, which beats allow, from any of the six scopes. If your organization wants a hard boundary, a deny rule at the administration or user scope holds regardless of what a project’s configuration says.

Where it fits

Powers sit on top of MCP and are made of steering, which makes them the clearest example of Kiro’s building blocks composing rather than competing. Skills are the adjacent idea: a skill is an on-demand procedure with no tools attached, a power is on-demand tools with instructions attached. Custom agents can be scoped so only the agent that needs a vendor’s tools can reach them.

By surface: powers install and run in the IDE and the CLI. Since September 1, 2026, powers configured in Kiro Web sync down to local IDE and CLI sessions, where they appear as read-only previews and are edited in the browser. Kiro Crew has its own analogous concept in Apps, installed from a built-in App Store.

Learn more

• Add a power walks through one install end to end.
• Add an MCP server covers the unpackaged alternative.
• MCP explains the protocol underneath.
• Kiro vs Other AI Tools compares powers with other tools’ extension formats.
• Use Cases shows where a power earns its place.