Kiro Crew

A persistent workspace for development work that self-improves and continues beyond one session.

Kiro Crew is an open source development workspace that runs locally or remotely on your hardware. It is persistent, self-learning, and self-evolving. Work with it from the desktop app, web dashboard, and CLI, or continue the same work through connection tools like Slack and Discord. Your multi-step tasks can run unattended, recurring jobs run on your schedule, and heartbeats monitor systems until something needs attention. Kiro Crew Apps tailor that experience to a specific job, combining a purpose-built interface with agents, skills, schedules, integrations, and backend services.

Quick start · Build from source · Why Kiro Crew · Capabilities · How it works · Security · Install · Telemetry · Docs

Quick start

You choose how to run Kiro Crew: the desktop app with automatic updates, a one-line install on your machine or a remote host, the Docker image for always-on servers, or a build from source. The default agent runs on kiro-cli, which you install and sign in to separately. First launch checks that prerequisite and links to the official setup guide when it is missing.

App downloads

Use the Stable desktop package for macOS or Windows x64. On Linux, start with the one-line install below. The install guide owns Insider and Nightly links, Linux .deb / .rpm / AppImage packages, architecture support, platform requirements, and sandbox setup.

Release channels

Stable is the default; Insider follows release candidates, and Nightly follows main. The release runbook owns the current triggers, version shapes, promotion behavior, cadence, and update-lane semantics.

One-line install

Install the signed Stable wheel without cloning the repository or building the frontend:

curl -fsSL https://download.crew.kiro.dev/cli.sh | sh

Then open http://localhost:5476. Pass --version to pin an exact release — the minimum pinnable release is 0.1.2, because 0.1.0 and 0.1.1 predate manifest signing and have no signed manifest to resolve:

curl -fsSL https://download.crew.kiro.dev/cli.sh | sh -s -- --version 0.6.0

The install guide owns channel selection, managed versus system Python, mirrors, first-run setup, upgrades, and recovery.

Docker

For always-on servers, the Gateway ships as a public multi-arch image on GHCR:

docker run -d --name kirocrew \
  -p 127.0.0.1:5476:5476 \
  -v kirocrew-home:/home/kirocrew \
  ghcr.io/kirodotdev/kirocrew:stable

See the Docker guide for first-run login, channel tags, and the container security model.

Build from source

macOS and Linux require Python 3.12+, Node.js 22+ (24 LTS recommended), and npm. The default ACP backend also requires kiro-cli: install it on the Gateway host and run kiro-cli login before using that backend. Other verified ACP harnesses have their own prerequisites in the install guide. Windows is supported through a native source install; follow the Windows guide instead of the shell steps below.

# 1. Clone and build Kiro Crew
git clone https://github.com/kirodotdev/KiroCrew.git
cd KiroCrew
make build
source .venv/bin/activate

# 2. Configure, verify, and start
kirocrew setup
kirocrew doctor
kirocrew gateway

Why Kiro Crew

Most agent sessions end when the chat closes. Kiro Crew runs continuously on hardware you control and keeps working between conversations.

Persistent. Sessions, memory, schedules, and task checkpoints survive Gateway restarts, and scheduled or reactive work continues without someone at the terminal.

Self-learning. Corrections and task failures become durable lessons. Preferences and project context carry into new sessions.

Self-evolving. Repeated patterns become reusable skills. Memory, lessons, and skills stay visible and editable, so each Kiro Crew grows more tailored to the person and work around it.

Runs where you choose. Your Mac, a local container, or a remote machine you control.

One Gateway, many surfaces. Work directly in the desktop app or web dashboard, or continue the same work from the CLI and messaging surfaces like Slack and Discord.

What Kiro Crew does

Capability	What it gives you
Persistent sessions	Run concurrent, isolated conversations, resume them after Gateway restarts, search prior sessions, and carry recent context into new work.
Self-learning	Turn corrections and task failures into durable lessons that change later behavior. Lessons can apply globally or carry a repo_scope that limits them to one repository; Crew Members keep private lessons in their own memory store.
Self-evolving skills	Synthesize reusable skills from repeated patterns, then inspect, refine, or remove them as your work changes.
Long-running tasks	Give Kiro Crew a task spec and walk away. It plans steps, executes them, validates results, retries failures, and resumes from checkpoints. "Implement this migration plan and stop if the tests fail" runs as a checkpointed task with validation at each step.
Unattended autonomy	Run scheduled agent work or deterministic scripts and commands without a model call. Monitor work until it is done, or react to messaging events and authenticated webhooks without someone at the terminal. "Every weekday at 9, summarize the open work I should review" becomes a timezone-aware recurring job delivered to the surface you choose.
Delegation	Spawn isolated subagents for parallel work and bring their results back into the parent conversation. "Research these three options in parallel and recommend one" fans out to isolated subagents and synthesizes the tradeoffs.
Work where you choose	Work directly in the desktop app or web dashboard, or continue through the CLI and any connected messaging surface without moving the agent runtime or its state.
Installable Apps	Add focused interfaces and domain workflows through dashboard pages, scoped Gateway APIs, events, and lifecycle hooks.
Extensible tools	Add MCP servers, markdown skills, and hooks without changing the core runtime.
Visible execution	Watch tool calls, subagent progress, context usage, approvals, schedules, memory, and logs from the dashboard.
Defense in depth	Combine tool approvals, OS sandboxing, sensitive-path checks, credential redaction, deny rules, audit events, and governance profiles.

You can also paste a screenshot and ask what is causing an error. Kiro Crew sends the image to the active Kiro model and keeps the diagnosis in the conversation history.

The complete inventory is in Features and What's New.

How it works

flowchart TD
    S["Desktop app · Web dashboard · CLI · Messaging channels"]
    G["Gateway<br/>access · sessions · memory · schedules · approvals · apps"]
    A["Agent sessions<br/>ACP runtime · selected harness · MCP tools · models"]
    S --> G --> A

The Gateway separates where the agent runs from where you work. Each conversation or background task is a logical agent session driven through the selected agent.acp_backend; depending on that harness and workload, the session uses a dedicated process or a handle on a shared ACP runtime. State, policy, approvals, schedules, memory, and apps remain on the Gateway host.

See the architecture overview for component boundaries, sessions for lifecycle and isolation, and MCP architecture for tool exposure.

Security and control

Kiro Crew enforces approvals, OS isolation where available, sensitive-path and credential guards, denied-operation rules, audit records, and an optional policy/profile ceiling at the runtime boundary. The dashboard binds to loopback by default; any remote exposure requires authenticated configuration.

Read the canonical security model and security architecture before changing or widening those controls. Protect credentials, review high-impact actions, and use SECURITY.md for private vulnerability reporting.

Install, configure, and operate

The install guide owns every install path, first-run step, optional dependency, upgrade, uninstall, and recovery procedure. User data lives under ~/.kiro/crew by default and moves with KIROCREW_HOME; configuration keys and precedence are canonical in the config spec.

For a new source or wheel install:

kirocrew setup
kirocrew doctor
kirocrew gateway

Run the Gateway as a boot-persistent service when needed:

kirocrew service install
kirocrew service status
kirocrew logs

Service ports, systemd/launchd behavior, containers, and remote-host access are documented in the install guide, Docker guide, and remote host guide.

Use kirocrew config get, kirocrew config set <key> <value>, and kirocrew config edit for the main configuration. Set a process port with KIROCREW_PORT or kirocrew gateway --port <n>. Start troubleshooting with kirocrew doctor, then inspect kirocrew logs (or kirocrew logs -f). See the troubleshooting guide for log sources, levels, diagnostics bundles, and recovery steps.

Anonymous usage telemetry

Kiro Crew sends one anonymous heartbeat per day so maintainers can see how many copies are actively running and which releases, Python minors, and install paths still need support. After a successful install or update from the official app catalog, it also sends one anonymous per-app receipt. Both signals are enabled by default, but first egress waits until the first-run privacy disclosure has been shown; they use the same controls below.

To turn it off, flip Settings → Privacy → Send anonymous usage heartbeat in the dashboard (the same switch appears on the last step of first-run onboarding). Or from a terminal:

kirocrew telemetry disable        # persists to config.json
export KIROCREW_TELEMETRY_DISABLED=1   # or per-shell / per-container
kirocrew telemetry status         # print exactly what would be sent

The toggle and kirocrew telemetry disable write the same setting, so either one sticks across restarts and upgrades. KIROCREW_TELEMETRY_DISABLED overrides both — when it is set, the dashboard toggle is disabled and says so.

Exactly these five fields are sent, at most once per day, and nothing else:

Field	Example	Why
Random instance id	9c75560d… (UUID4)	Lets us count how many copies ran on a given day. Generated once on first run and derived from nothing — not your hostname, username, MAC, IP, or any account. It identifies an installed copy, never a person.
App version	0.1.2	Which releases are still in use. Release number only — build stamps like -nightly.20260731t065756 are stripped before sending, because a per-build timestamp is near-unique and would help identify a specific machine.
Python minor version	3.12	When the minimum can move up
Install path	dmg	Which distribution format people actually use
First-send flag	1 / 0	First successfully reported install vs returning

Official-app install receipts are separate and event-based. After a successful official-catalog install or update, Kiro Crew sends one GET to /b/1/install/<app-slug>?t=<token>&k=<fresh|update>&v=<release> on the same telemetry host. The slug is the public catalog identifier. t is the first 32 hex characters of HMAC-SHA256 keyed by an independent local receipt secret over app-install:<slug>; that secret never leaves the machine, so tokens for different apps cannot be linked to each other or to the heartbeat install id. k separates fresh installs from updates, and v is the same release-only Kiro Crew version clamp used by the heartbeat.

Receipts are emitted only for bundled or edition-provided official catalog entries. Apps from user-configured registries, local-directory installs, and self-registered apps emit nothing, so private app names never leave the machine. If the receipt-only secret cannot be persisted, the receipt is skipped.

This list used to be nine fields. Release channel, OS, CPU architecture and governance posture were removed — each was coarse on its own, but the instance id is stable, so those attributes all describe the same copy and together they narrowed the group any one install blends into far more than any single field suggests.

We report this as Daily Active Crews rather than "users": Kiro Crew has no account system of its own, and the Kiro sign-in that kiro-cli uses for model access is never read or sent. There is no way to resolve a copy to a person, so one person running Kiro Crew on three machines counts as three Crews.

Never sent: your prompts, model responses, file contents, file paths, repo or branch names, credentials, environment variables, hostname, username, or IP address. The receiving CDN is configured not to log client IP addresses — the log delivery does not include that field, so no IP is stored at all.

Automatically off in CI, and whenever KIROCREW_HOME points somewhere other than ~/.kiro/crew (dev instances and pods are never counted).

Enterprise administrators can pin it off entirely. A capabilities.telemetry entry in the security policy blocks both outbound signals regardless of the local setting, and the dashboard toggle then says so instead of offering a change that would not take effect:

{"version": 1, "boot": {"fail_closed": true},
 "capabilities": {"telemetry": {"enabled": false}}}

See docs/system-specs/modules/governance.md.

This is separate from telemetry.enabled, which controls local-only performance metrics that never leave your machine. See docs/system-specs/modules/metrics.md.

Docs and contributing

Topic	Start here
Install and packaging	Install and build, Windows, Docker, Desktop, Remote host, Release process
Product capabilities	Features, Skills, All user docs
All documentation	docs/ for contributor and architecture docs
Channels	Slack, Discord, Telegram, Teams, Webex, WeCom, WeChat (Weixin), WhatsApp, Feishu (Lark), iMessage
Architecture	System architecture, Memory, MCP, App Kit
Trust and dependencies	Security, Security policy
Project work	Contributing, Tenets, Governance, Maintainers, AI assistant rules, Changelog

Contributions are welcome. Follow CONTRIBUTING.md for setup, change-scoped validation, commit format, and the pull-request workflow. Use GitHub Issues for bugs and feature requests; report vulnerabilities privately through SECURITY.md.

Contributors

Kiro Crew was made possible by its internal community, the people who supported the project and shipped its code, together with everyone who has since opened a pull request in the open. This is that founding group; as Kiro Crew grows in the open, we look forward to many more contributors joining them. Thank you to everyone who helped make this tool possible:

Listed alphabetically by GitHub username. Internal contributors appear here if they consented to public recognition in the contributor survey; open-source contributors are collected automatically from this repository's merged pull requests — both the author of each pull request and the people who reported the issues it closed, so a report that led to a real change is credited like the change itself. Contributions that leave neither trace — a code review, a translation, an idea, a private security report — are added on request. If you contributed and would like to be added, corrected, or removed, please open an issue or a pull request.

License

Kiro Crew is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. See NOTICE for attribution information.