Speaker 1: Hey, folks, welcome back to another episode of JavaScript Jabber.
Speaker 1: This week, on our panel, we have Steve Edwards Yo yo.
Speaker 2: Yo, coming at you aj style from just outside Washington, DC.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was trying to come up with your name
Speaker 1: and I was looking at Eric, so my brain kind
Speaker 1: of went wait, wait, wait wait. I'm Charles max Wood
Speaker 1: from top Endevs. And this week we have two guests.
Speaker 1: We have Eric Hanschett, Hello, Hello, welcome back, and we
Speaker 1: also have Claire. I didn't get your last name, Claire
Speaker 1: well gory Oh cool, sounds Italian, so you're probably awesome, all.
Speaker 2: Right, So I sounded French, but that's just me.
Speaker 1: It could be anyway. Do you guys want to just
Speaker 1: introduce yourselves real quickly? Got Eric on before, but Claire,
Speaker 1: you're new to us, so we want to know how
Speaker 1: awesome we are.
Speaker 3: Sure. I'm Claire. I'm a senior Principal engineer at as
Speaker 3: in agentic AI, and I work on all seeing developers
Speaker 3: and agents basically hero ID and the strands Open Source
Speaker 3: Agent SDK.
Speaker 1: Cool.
Speaker 4: Well, and I'm Erica. You've been on here a few times,
Speaker 4: a senior developer advocate at AWUS Huge VIEWJS fan it's
Speaker 4: probably the last few times you may have heard me
Speaker 4: on this podcast talking about it and all the work
Speaker 4: I've done in that community and in the JavaScript community.
Speaker 4: So glad to be here today and talk about some
Speaker 4: really exciting that we released recently. That Claire can talk
Speaker 4: a lot about Kiro, which is our new AI I D.
Speaker 2: So a little bit of background before we get started.
Speaker 2: So we had Eric on a month and a half
Speaker 2: ago somewhere around there. I forgot and found out later
Speaker 2: that he had been planning to talk about Kiro, but
Speaker 2: it turned out it wasn't quite ready for release at
Speaker 2: that time, so we sort of scrambled and talked about
Speaker 2: other things sounded we sounded really good thought. But now
Speaker 2: Kiro's has been released, and I know I've heard a
Speaker 2: lot about it on other podcasts, you know, in other
Speaker 2: blogs and so on, and people have been really raving
Speaker 2: about it. So we're finally here to talk about it
Speaker 2: officially and all it can do for us.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious. Sometimes it's obvious why people name stuff
Speaker 1: what they name it. Right, It's like this does email,
Speaker 1: so we called it email thing? Right? How did you
Speaker 1: come up with kiro?
Speaker 3: That was a AI assisted process? Actually? It actually means
Speaker 3: crossroads in Japanese, and so we were looking around for
Speaker 3: a word that would reflect the sort of new development
Speaker 3: style that we have now. Our development has changed so much,
Speaker 3: so we were at a crossroads.
Speaker 1: Gotcha. It's funny because I go for walks and I
Speaker 1: talked to Grock the whole time, so I know how
Speaker 1: this goes. Sometimes it's like, oh, that's a good idea,
Speaker 1: So do you want to explain what it is and
Speaker 1: how it works, maybe how it's different from some other
Speaker 1: things that it sounds like do the same thing.
Speaker 3: Well, Kiro is an AI powered ide like Eric said,
Speaker 3: but one of the things that makes it different is
Speaker 3: that we've all been kind of vibe coding for a
Speaker 3: bit now, and one of the things that we were
Speaker 3: noticing is that people really struggled to get what they
Speaker 3: wanted out of vibe coding, especially when it came to
Speaker 3: more complex tasks. And there was a kind of an
Speaker 3: aha moment for me when we and was the reason
Speaker 3: that we started Kiro, which was what if developers instead
Speaker 3: of saying kind of commands to an AI assistant of
Speaker 3: how to change their code, what if they just declared
Speaker 3: what they wanted? What if they defined requirements and then
Speaker 3: worked with the AI on requirements and how that broke
Speaker 3: down into individual tasks. And that was really the birth
Speaker 3: of what we call spectrum and development, which we have
Speaker 3: dedicated UX around in KIRO. That's really what makes it different.
Speaker 3: Spec based development is kind of what it sounds like.
Speaker 3: You create a specification for what you want. That could
Speaker 3: be a brand new application, it could be a feature,
Speaker 3: it could be a massive refactor in your code base.
Speaker 3: But you go through this process where you define the requirements,
Speaker 3: the use cases, user stories. You can have the AI
Speaker 3: generate all of those, because I remember writing these by
Speaker 3: hand ten fifteen years ago and it wasn't that much fun.
Speaker 3: And then you go through a process of working through
Speaker 3: the technical design with the AI and finally what tasks
Speaker 3: that breaks down to, and then you have a lot
Speaker 3: of control over steering the actual implementation of those individual tasks.
Speaker 3: And we've heard from folks that this has enabled them
Speaker 3: to at the end of the day, produce much better
Speaker 3: quality code and actually get to what they wanted. I
Speaker 3: said of this very frustrating experience with vicuding, we were
Speaker 3: hearing about where it's like you go ten cycles and
Speaker 3: that it's almost like the AI is not getting it
Speaker 3: getting what you want.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've experienced that a little bit. I've been using
Speaker 1: cursor and a co pilot. I'm depending on what i'm
Speaker 1: working on. And you talked about it breaking it down
Speaker 1: into lists, And it's funny because cursor will give me
Speaker 1: a these are the things I'm going to do, and
Speaker 1: then it'll check them off as it goes right. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't always get it right. If it's something simple,
Speaker 1: probably the vast majority of the time it gets that right.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the second it gets complicated, it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this isn't working. Sometimes I'm still not quite sure what
Speaker 1: it did or how to fix it, and so I'll
Speaker 1: ask it to fix it, and then it still doesn't work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I get that. It sounds like this is a
Speaker 1: little bit more in depth than sort of the process of,
Speaker 1: you know, giving it a single prompt and then having
Speaker 1: it come up with I'm going to do this, and
Speaker 1: then I'm going to do that, and then I'm going
Speaker 1: to do that and then I'll be done.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it still starts with a single prompt. But
Speaker 3: one of the things that I've noticed is that it's
Speaker 3: really hard for us to describe what's in our head
Speaker 3: from the get go, from a blank prompt text input box.
Speaker 3: And so often what I find is that there's this
Speaker 3: iterative process of effectively the AI trying to guess what
Speaker 3: I meant by this simple sentence and then being able
Speaker 3: to iterate on that and say, no, no, that's not
Speaker 3: exactly what I meant. I actually meant this, or oh,
Speaker 3: that's an interesting idea I didn't even think of. And
Speaker 3: so that process of creating this spec is really helpful
Speaker 3: for refining what it is you want. Often if you
Speaker 3: go to Vibe coding, it's kind of like you know,
Speaker 3: when you have an engineer who's a bit a bit fresh,
Speaker 3: and they always jump right to writing the code before
Speaker 3: actually thinking about the problem. That's kind of the Vibe
Speaker 3: coding experience is the AI jumped into writing the code
Speaker 3: before kind of understand the problem. And so this spec
Speaker 3: driven development helps you to kind of make sure you're
Speaker 3: on the same page and that you know everything that's
Speaker 3: in your head of what you're thinking about the application
Speaker 3: or the future is actually out on paper without necessarily
Speaker 3: having to type it out all yourself. You kind of
Speaker 3: just go through this iterative process of the AI kind
Speaker 3: of guesses writes the spec for you, and then you say, no, no,
Speaker 3: that's not exactly what I meant.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It sounds a little bit like the process I
Speaker 1: went through more as a freelancer than really is a
Speaker 1: full time employee, where you know, I'd have the client
Speaker 1: come to me and say, hey, we want this feature,
Speaker 1: and then I'd ask questions, do you want it to
Speaker 1: do this? Do you want it to do that? And
Speaker 1: you want it to look like this? Do you want
Speaker 1: it to blah blah blah, right, and then there was
Speaker 1: further iteration once we got going where it was okay,
Speaker 1: I have a rough version of this, and then they
Speaker 1: go look at it. Oh, no, this isn't quite what
Speaker 1: I wanted. And so by the time we're done, yeah,
Speaker 1: I had a fully fleshed out understanding of what they
Speaker 1: wanted and could build it. And it sounds like that's
Speaker 1: what this is doing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I love that idea of the rough version
Speaker 3: of it, is this what you wanted? Because so often
Speaker 3: we don't know what we want until we actually see
Speaker 3: it when it comes to application development. And you know,
Speaker 3: we've seen across moving from Waterfall, where we tried to
Speaker 3: you know, have all the requirements ironed out at the beginning,
Speaker 3: and that never really worked because those were not Those
Speaker 3: were never the actual requirements that you ended up with
Speaker 3: at the end once you saw the application. We went
Speaker 3: to agile, where we're attempting to move into sprints, where
Speaker 3: we have some capability of refining those requirements as we build.
Speaker 3: But even with something like agile development, it still takes
Speaker 3: so long to get to something that's working that you
Speaker 3: can actually show to a customer, show to a user.
Speaker 3: So it's going to take multiple months. And one of
Speaker 3: the powerful things about AI assisted coding is you can
Speaker 3: get to that tangible result so much faster. You can
Speaker 3: build entire application may not work exactly right, it may
Speaker 3: not be exactly what you had pictured in your head
Speaker 3: to begin with, but you can actually play with it.
Speaker 3: You can you can touch it, use it, and go
Speaker 3: back to your requirements and say, oh, actually this this
Speaker 3: part wasn't exactly right, or oh we forgot this, let's
Speaker 3: change these a little bit and regenerate. And so that's
Speaker 3: been really powerful for getting into kind of prototype driven development,
Speaker 3: and I've found that that ends up with a better
Speaker 3: product at the end of the day because you are
Speaker 3: able to really really use the product very early on
Speaker 3: while you're still forming the requirements.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, I'm kind of imagining how this flows. I'm
Speaker 1: a little curious once it has the spec if it's
Speaker 1: something that's a little more complicated. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I've experienced more with Cursor is that it will
Speaker 1: go and it will do the whole job right, and
Speaker 1: so it gets done and I'm like, I have a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Does it do that or does it kind of so
Speaker 1: march through a piece at a time there too.
Speaker 3: We call that supervised versus autopilot mode. So sometimes you know,
Speaker 3: you just want to get something done right. You just
Speaker 3: want a really simple tool and it doesn't need to
Speaker 3: be exactly right. And I find that autopilot mode is
Speaker 3: going to be the fastest way. That means exactly what
Speaker 3: you just said. It's just going to plow through the work.
Speaker 3: It's going to completely build the entire thing. Supervised mode
Speaker 3: is where you want to give feedback one step at
Speaker 3: a time. So inspec mode, what you can do is
Speaker 3: it generates a task liss similar to what you were
Speaker 3: saying that the AI says, here's what I'm going to do,
Speaker 3: but it will actually stop for your feedback after each
Speaker 3: individual task, and so you can say, whoa, whoa, you
Speaker 3: are starting off on the wrong foot here, let's rewind
Speaker 3: and get this right. And I find that that does
Speaker 3: end up with more of the code that I already
Speaker 3: wanted because I'm steering it along the way. In between
Speaker 3: these little individual tests. I will say that I've noticed
Speaker 3: AI models really like to do a lot of work.
Speaker 3: And so what I find is when they when they
Speaker 3: generate these spec files, it's following all the software engineering
Speaker 3: best practices. It's got high unit test coverage, it's got
Speaker 3: integration tests. It might sometimes say I'm going to try
Speaker 3: to deploy this before before deciding I'm done. And that's
Speaker 3: really great if you are building a production app. Sometimes
Speaker 3: I'm just building a little side project or I'm building
Speaker 3: a little utility that I just kind of need to
Speaker 3: get done and I don't need integration tests. So being
Speaker 3: able to review that list of tasks for it goes
Speaker 3: off and does a lot more work than I wanted
Speaker 3: it to do is also really helpful.
Speaker 4: Nice I feel like it's like an eager intern. It
Speaker 4: just wants, it wants to help you so much and
Speaker 4: do everything for you, and you can definitely be like, no,
Speaker 4: let's supervise this one at a time. YEA, let's list
Speaker 4: delete things we don't need. We don't need three thousand
Speaker 4: integration tests.
Speaker 1: Definitely. I love the eager intern analogy. You sent me
Speaker 1: for coffee and I came back with doughnuts and sandwiches.
Speaker 3: And the whole coffee machine did.
Speaker 1: Your dry clean. So so do you use it now
Speaker 1: or go ahead?
Speaker 2: I was going to say so in reading through the
Speaker 2: instruction chareing what you were just talking about. It sounds
Speaker 2: like there's a lot of it's like dock writing, almost
Speaker 2: like you're planning and figuring out I'm going to do this.
Speaker 2: How much of it? How much does it actually write
Speaker 2: code versus just doing the planning? Is it all of
Speaker 2: the above? I mean could say, for instance, if you
Speaker 2: are a design challenge back in engineer like me or
Speaker 2: a code writer like me who has no design chops whatsoever,
Speaker 2: you know, and I actually have a project I'm working
Speaker 2: on that I really would love to do, this can
Speaker 2: do something like come up with at least a somewhat
Speaker 2: workable UI design based on what you're doing, you know,
Speaker 2: in terms of page layouts and elements, and then you
Speaker 2: naw bar structured tables formed that kind of stuff as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it can both write the specs and write the
Speaker 3: actual code for you. And the technical design step is
Speaker 3: really helpful for some of the UX as well, and
Speaker 3: kind of the code architecture, so you can say, what
Speaker 3: front end framework do you want to use, what kind
Speaker 3: of component library do you want to use? You know,
Speaker 3: compared to I mean when I first started out in
Speaker 3: the industry, I was literally writing waterfall requirements documents. What
Speaker 3: I like is that it's not so much about you
Speaker 3: writing these documents as they are kind of artifacts for
Speaker 3: a shared understanding between you and the and the AI,
Speaker 3: and so you don't have to actually write any of it.
Speaker 3: You can keep prompting that, you can keep prompting in
Speaker 3: KIRO until you have the requirements that you want, or
Speaker 3: you can you know, kind of edit them yourself where
Speaker 3: need be. But it's really helpful and really the whole
Speaker 3: life cycle of kind of ideation and then design and
Speaker 3: then actually writing the code.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll just jump in. I assumed that I guess
Speaker 1: I've been working from the assumption that it's as capable
Speaker 1: as any of the other systems out there, right, So,
Speaker 1: like I said, cursor and copilots seem to be able
Speaker 1: to do the UI stuff just fine, because I have
Speaker 1: the same problem, right, I work almost exclusively on the
Speaker 1: back end. In fact, for my full time job, I'm
Speaker 1: basically building APIs and then somebody else is doing all
Speaker 1: of the front end work. And so when I'm working
Speaker 1: on my own projects, yeah, I tend to let it
Speaker 1: do the UI UX stuff and it does fine. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not always beautiful or whatever. But the thing is
Speaker 1: is I can more easily than tell it I want
Speaker 1: this over here, or hey, this isn't working quite the
Speaker 1: way I expect. And a lot of times again back
Speaker 1: to the point of you have to see it before
Speaker 1: you know what you want. Like I'll go in and
Speaker 1: I'll just do something instinctively and I didn't tell it
Speaker 1: I needed that, But then I'm like, oh, I need
Speaker 1: it so that when I click here, it does this
Speaker 1: and so. And it's usually pretty good about that.
Speaker 3: And you can also give it. You can give it
Speaker 3: kind of a Napkin diagram of what you want the
Speaker 3: UI to look like, and it will actually translate that
Speaker 3: into requirements or design statements. So that's pretty cool as well.
Speaker 1: So one thing that I'm wondering having used. Like I said,
Speaker 1: I've used Cursor and I've used Copilot. I'm working on
Speaker 1: figuring out how to get Copilot to work with Emacs.
Speaker 1: So I like that a little more than Visual Studio code.
Speaker 1: But Cursor's based on DS code. Is that is that
Speaker 1: what you did with kiro or is kiro something else?
Speaker 3: It's based on code OSS similar to the Yeah, so
Speaker 3: it feels very familiar. But we were also able to,
Speaker 3: for example, with this this speck layout. One of our
Speaker 3: hopes is to a little bit take the focus of
Speaker 3: the environment away from just the code. So one of
Speaker 3: the things that I noticed as we were working with
Speaker 3: code OSM is it's interesting the way that the colors
Speaker 3: are where code is very much the focus. So in
Speaker 3: that I use a light a light mode, and all
Speaker 3: everything in the UI is gray except for the code,
Speaker 3: which is in white white background. And so we were
Speaker 3: we were looking at this and thinking, you know, actually,
Speaker 3: you don't want necessarily the code to be the focus
Speaker 3: in your ID, and I think we're not We're not
Speaker 3: quite there yet. I think our first step is with
Speaker 3: this kind of dedicated UX around spec based development, where
Speaker 3: the focus is on the spec the design and the tasks.
Speaker 3: But I think my hope at least is that the
Speaker 3: ide becomes a place it is not just about writing code.
Speaker 3: It becomes a place that is more tailored around, you know,
Speaker 3: defining what you want, and then the code is is
Speaker 3: kind of an artifact that comes from that.
Speaker 1: MM I'm trying to imagine to myself what that looks like. Also,
Speaker 1: you're the only person I know that uses a light mode.
Speaker 3: I just don't like staring at black all day.
Speaker 2: So can we maybe go at a high level? I
Speaker 2: don't know how detailed do you want to get. Granted,
Speaker 2: everybody can't really see the ID since we're not screen
Speaker 2: sharing with you can just sort of walk some steps through.
Speaker 5: Let's say you're starting a.
Speaker 2: Project completely from scratch and you want to build some
Speaker 2: you know, maybe something more complex than a two do app.
Speaker 2: You know, who knows what are the steps? Because now,
Speaker 2: for instance, if I come, I'm looking at the ID
Speaker 2: right now, and it looks like you have two different
Speaker 2: ways possible ways to start, it gives you the option
Speaker 2: to be the vibe respect right, So one is chatting
Speaker 2: and one is planning first, So it looks like those
Speaker 2: are two different ways you can start.
Speaker 5: Am I reading that correctly?
Speaker 3: That's exactly right? Yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, So let's say I want to start with the
Speaker 2: vibe mode. So what am I doing or how what
Speaker 2: are the steps I'm taking.
Speaker 3: That's vibe coding, as I think we're all kind of
Speaker 3: familiar with. Now you're you're prompting the AI to generate code,
Speaker 3: it's going to you know, if you do have any example,
Speaker 3: any existing code in there, it's going to take a
Speaker 3: look at that and bring it into the context. But
Speaker 3: if not, it's just going to start writing code for you.
Speaker 2: Right, So there's this chat panel down here, so this
Speaker 2: is where you start saying, hey, yeah, this is my code.
Speaker 2: I want to add this feature that's right, and make
Speaker 2: it look like this. This is my stack, you know,
Speaker 2: and I'm using you with you know, a level in
Speaker 2: the back end with nursia, jas and tailwind, et cetera.
Speaker 2: That's my preferred stack, yep. And then it's going to
Speaker 2: start generating what is it going to start generating documents
Speaker 2: there that with the output, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so in vibe mode, it's just going to start
Speaker 3: writing code. It's that that very familiar experience I was
Speaker 3: seeing before, where it's just going to jump right into
Speaker 3: writing the code and then kind of iterate from there
Speaker 3: of trying to get the AI to update the code
Speaker 3: into what it is you want it to build. And
Speaker 3: so I find that that's very useful. I find that
Speaker 3: the so the Cure team built uses kiro to build kiro,
Speaker 3: and I find kind of across the team that we
Speaker 3: tend to jump into vibe mode if we know exactly
Speaker 3: what we want. You know, we know the code that
Speaker 3: needs to be written. We're just kind of steering the
Speaker 3: AI to generate that code. And it's a pretty simple,
Speaker 3: simple problem. But if we don't know what we want,
Speaker 3: we don't know exactly what code needs to be written,
Speaker 3: will jump into spec mode or if it's just a
Speaker 3: more complex problem. And I think that that takes a
Speaker 3: little bit of intuition today, It kind of takes a
Speaker 3: little bit of playing, and it requires knowing what do
Speaker 3: I think the AI is going to be good at
Speaker 3: kind of one shot right vibe mode to get what
Speaker 3: you want. You want it to be pretty close to
Speaker 3: one shot. You don't want to have to do a
Speaker 3: ton of prompt iterations. But if it, you know, you
Speaker 3: kind of get this intuition of what is simple enough
Speaker 3: for me to give to vibe mode and then anything
Speaker 3: more complex than that that needs to be broken down
Speaker 3: into individuals or they don't exactly know what I need yet.
Speaker 3: It is a really good starting place for a spec.
Speaker 4: And maybe I'm jumping ahead here, but as we're using bimode,
Speaker 4: as Claire said, there's it reads the files, but you
Speaker 4: can't create steering files or kind of the same thing
Speaker 4: you might see and other code editors like rules files
Speaker 4: that you can set up so it follows certain patterns
Speaker 4: as you're vibe coding back and forth. And you can
Speaker 4: even have here generate these steering files for you to
Speaker 4: start off with.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I find that that's really the first thing to
Speaker 3: do if you're starting in an existing project is generate
Speaker 3: the steering files because it creates this really great summary
Speaker 3: of the code base and what it is and what
Speaker 3: it does and what the architecture is. That really helps
Speaker 3: you to save on contact space, so it's not having
Speaker 3: to read a ton of files every time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, outputs better code.
Speaker 1: I feel like, Yeah, so a couple of other questions
Speaker 1: that I have, I'm going to change the topic a
Speaker 1: little bit. So both Copilot and Cursor allow you to
Speaker 1: change the model you're using. I'm assuming that that's the
Speaker 1: case here too. I can say I want to use
Speaker 1: Claud and then okay, Claud's not cutting it for me.
Speaker 1: I want to use GPT or is there some kind of
Speaker 1: auto selection that you do?
Speaker 3: Currently the model that's available in the product is clouds
Speaker 3: on it for.
Speaker 1: Okay, and I can't change that.
Speaker 3: That's right, But we currently in previews, so things change.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, and only get better, folks. And then the
Speaker 1: other question I had was, so both those other systems
Speaker 1: that I've used you get for what you pay. So
Speaker 1: my employer is paying for Copilot, and so that's why
Speaker 1: I'm using cursorund my own stuff is because get hub
Speaker 1: didn't give me a good way to differentiate between credits
Speaker 1: that I pay for and credits that they pay for.
Speaker 1: So I've looked at setting up a separate getub account
Speaker 1: just for their stuff. And then anyway, but I guess
Speaker 1: my question is, so you always have a limit on
Speaker 1: the number of credits or premium credits you can use?
Speaker 1: Is that the same for Kiro? I looked at the pricing,
Speaker 1: patient looks like that's more or less the case.
Speaker 3: But yeah, we have I guess four different tiers free
Speaker 3: pro pro blust power and very similar to other pricing
Speaker 3: plans you've seen in the space, you get a certain
Speaker 3: number requests or credits that come with that, and then
Speaker 3: over once you go beyond that for the month, you
Speaker 3: can enable per request or for credit pricing.
Speaker 4: And since we are in preview, like Claire said, things
Speaker 4: are still in flux, things might be changing. We have
Speaker 4: been listening really closely. You have a discord community and
Speaker 4: there's Reddit communities, lots of different communities we're looking at
Speaker 4: hearing the feedback has some really great people in those
Speaker 4: threads every day listening to that. So we're constantly listening
Speaker 4: and so there may be updates, may not be updates,
Speaker 4: but stay tuned on that and check our blog on
Speaker 4: all the pricing details. Since it's in preview right now,
Speaker 4: it's under a wait list. So one thing is we
Speaker 4: had lots of great feedback when we first launched it.
Speaker 4: We had actually so many people want to try it,
Speaker 4: we put up a wait list and so we're slowly
Speaker 4: going through that. Weitlist, adding more people on and then
Speaker 4: we'll have more information about that soon.
Speaker 1: So one other question that I have with this, I
Speaker 1: feel like i'm hogging the mic, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: keep asking my questions. So I'm kind of imagining. So
Speaker 1: the Vibe mode sounds a lot like what I've seen
Speaker 1: other people doing with the other agent systems, right, and
Speaker 1: so you know, I don't necessarily see a major advantage
Speaker 1: one way or the other between this and those. But
Speaker 1: then you've got that spec mode, which is something that
Speaker 1: is different, right, And so I'm I'm trying to think
Speaker 1: to myself, Okay, when will that really really deeply pay off?
Speaker 1: Is it those super complex features or tasks? Are there
Speaker 1: other things that I'm just not even thinking of where
Speaker 1: you're going to say, oh, well, we tried this with
Speaker 1: our you know, with our workload, and it made a
Speaker 1: major difference here and maybe not so much of a
Speaker 1: difference on some of the other stuff we did.
Speaker 3: I mean, in my experience, I would say I get
Speaker 3: higher quality code at the end of spec mode. With
Speaker 3: five mode, I find that either I have to put
Speaker 3: some of the practices in steering rules, like you have
Speaker 3: to read, you have to write tests, you have to
Speaker 3: run those tests. I find that at the end of
Speaker 3: the spec mode, the AI has already done that for me.
Speaker 3: And like I was saying, sometimes that's overkill. When it
Speaker 3: puts that in the task list, it says, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm going to write tests and run tests at every
Speaker 3: step of these data. And sometimes I say, no, it
Speaker 3: just remove all the tests. But but when I'm writing
Speaker 3: something for production, I find that I get higher quality.
Speaker 3: I find that I don't have to iterate on the
Speaker 3: code as much once it's finished, especially if I'm steering,
Speaker 3: just steering it along the way, And so I find
Speaker 3: I end up with I guess the right thing the
Speaker 3: first time more often. And I would say the other
Speaker 3: one is I'm trying to think of We have some
Speaker 3: examples from the Cure team using Kiro to build Hero,
Speaker 3: especially in UH some of the code oss UH code base.
Speaker 3: This is a massive ten year old code base, and
Speaker 3: there's some changes that we've had to make in the
Speaker 3: in the in our our fork of it. It is
Speaker 3: really hard to understand that. And so I was thinking about,
Speaker 3: you know, so many developers having to work through a
Speaker 3: massive legacy code basis, which we know there are many
Speaker 3: of in the world, and having to trying to make
Speaker 3: a change to one of those code bases. This is
Speaker 3: like incredibly scary thing, right, and our experience was that
Speaker 3: that process helped us to work with the AI to
Speaker 3: build an understanding of where those changes needed to be made.
Speaker 3: And that was because it was able to kind of
Speaker 3: have this planning stage where it looked through a lot
Speaker 3: of the code, summarized, a lot of the code, figured
Speaker 3: out all the places that needed to be changed for
Speaker 3: a particular feature, and that was helpful for the developer
Speaker 3: learning as well. Right, they didn't they didn't actually know
Speaker 3: where where all these changes needed to be made, so
Speaker 3: it was really helpful for that, you know, both the
Speaker 3: steering files that were generated for that code base, but
Speaker 3: also just going through this planning phase was really helpful
Speaker 3: for the developer doing that.
Speaker 1: Cool.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean that would make sense, right that
Speaker 2: anything more you put into the planning, the better your
Speaker 2: execution is going to be on the back end, while
Speaker 2: at the same time understanding you know, I just am
Speaker 2: working through a large project at my day to day
Speaker 2: and no matter how much you plan, there's stuff that's
Speaker 2: going to change as you go along. You're going to
Speaker 2: find out a library doesn't work or doesn't have what
Speaker 2: you need, or here's a better option, or you have
Speaker 2: to totally scrap it because of other considerations. So I
Speaker 2: guess if kiro can handle the changes, which it seems
Speaker 2: like it can, where you can go and say, okay,
Speaker 2: this change, now I need to rescope this and have
Speaker 2: this then yeah that's awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And the fact that you can steer it as
Speaker 1: it barfs out all that code.
Speaker 2: Yeah, bar is that a technical term?
Speaker 3: Trap?
Speaker 1: It is when I use cursor.
Speaker 2: So just from a training standpoint, I've been poking around,
Speaker 2: you know, just on YouTube. If I search, I'll see
Speaker 2: a bunch of stuff on hero. Do you guys have
Speaker 2: any particular training videos or step in your channel.
Speaker 5: On kiro on like video stuff?
Speaker 2: Okay, here's how you do this.
Speaker 4: I could jump in here in this one.
Speaker 3: Yep. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So the full developed Rabits team, We're really excited. I've
Speaker 4: been creating a lot of content. We have our own
Speaker 4: Twitch channel, so we've been creating weekly every other week videos.
Speaker 4: Claire was just actually on one couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 4: I believe, and we've been creating. We have a YouTube
Speaker 4: channel for kiro too. We have a bunch of videos there,
Speaker 4: and we have blue Sky and x account. So yeah,
Speaker 4: we kind of hit all the channels up to try
Speaker 4: to get out and also just going to the kiro
Speaker 4: dot dev website and then looking at the blogs in
Speaker 4: the docks a great way to start.
Speaker 3: And the discord community is so active. That's been one
Speaker 3: of the the nicest surprises almost of this lunch. You know,
Speaker 3: we wanted a way to connect with individual developers, right,
Speaker 3: but I've been so excited to see really a community
Speaker 3: forming and people helping each other on the Discord. So
Speaker 3: that's been amazing to see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have to say, with most of the things
Speaker 1: that I've worked on, when the people are great, it
Speaker 1: makes it just that much better. Like it, it's fun
Speaker 1: to deliver something cool and it's fun to see that
Speaker 1: it made a difference. But when you're able to connect,
Speaker 1: I don't know, at least for me, it's a whole
Speaker 1: different thing. Yeah, So where does this go next? Like,
Speaker 1: what are you putting into kro next? Is there going
Speaker 1: to be a you don't even need a developer any more? Mode?
Speaker 1: I hear people worry about that all the time.
Speaker 3: I mean, some things that folks have been asking us for,
Speaker 3: especially in the Discord, We're listening very closely, things like
Speaker 3: background tasks folks have been asking for, where maybe you
Speaker 3: do want to set it and forget it for a
Speaker 3: little bit and let it go for ten to fifteen minutes.
Speaker 3: We've been finding that that mode is useful when you
Speaker 3: have a project where the AI can iterate for a
Speaker 3: long time. So, for example, we have a project internally
Speaker 3: that is written in RUSS that was done entirely with
Speaker 3: AI coding, and the Rust compiler gives such good feedback
Speaker 3: about the code that you can kind of let it.
Speaker 3: Let the AI go for ten minutes and it will
Speaker 3: work out all the bugs because the Rust compiler is
Speaker 3: giving it such such good feedback, and so you can
Speaker 3: let it go for ten minutes and the code that
Speaker 3: comes out might not be you know, massive amount of
Speaker 3: code of blab of code for you to review, but
Speaker 3: it's gone through so much testing it's definitely going to be.
Speaker 3: It's almost always right when it comes back. But you
Speaker 3: also don't necessarily want to be you know, running your
Speaker 3: local laptops to you for one hundred percent. For that
Speaker 3: whole time, the folks have been asking us, you know,
Speaker 3: how can we run it? Have the task maybe run
Speaker 3: on a different machine, like on an easy to instance
Speaker 3: something like that, or just you know, multiple threads going
Speaker 3: on in their local laptop. Let's see some other things
Speaker 3: that folks have been asking us about.
Speaker 1: I'm imagining somebody using that Kiro build me Twitter.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, somebody already me a YouTube clone that
Speaker 3: they built with Kiro. But let's see what else. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of opportunity for improvement in the spectrum and development.
Speaker 3: I think we're just getting started there. We have some
Speaker 3: really interesting ideas about how to prove that the code
Speaker 3: that was generated actually meets the requirements that you set.
Speaker 3: I think we've all seen that. Sometimes models will say
Speaker 3: that they have met your requirements and they have not
Speaker 3: met your requirements, and so we have some really interesting
Speaker 3: ideas there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I've experienced that too, where it says I did
Speaker 1: it and I tried it and it worked and no.
Speaker 2: All right, so Eric, what is the Sorry? Go ahead, we're.
Speaker 1: Getting close to the time for picks, so when you
Speaker 1: to start writing down, But that's fine, go ahead and
Speaker 1: ask your question.
Speaker 2: So, Eric, what is the AWS channel on YouTube or
Speaker 2: what is the channel for Kiro?
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a Kiro channel on YouTube. I think it's
Speaker 4: kiro dot dev. So if you go to YouTube dot
Speaker 4: com slash at kiro dot dev you.
Speaker 3: Will o t k Dev.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, k I R O d O T DEV. That's
Speaker 4: a good call it yep.
Speaker 1: Okay, And do we get the visuals on there? What's that?
Speaker 1: Do we get to see your faces on there or
Speaker 1: somebody else if.
Speaker 4: You look there today? As of this recording, I'm not
Speaker 4: sure when this is going out, but I said today, Yeah,
Speaker 4: I just did a video with James Ward. It's extending
Speaker 4: tirost capabilities with MCP. We didn't even get into this,
Speaker 4: but it does have MCP capabilities, which is I'm sure
Speaker 4: you guys done shows on it. But yeah, we go
Speaker 4: through in this in the latest video in the channel
Speaker 4: on how to I add some fun MCP servers how
Speaker 4: to set that up? So yeah, and there's a lot
Speaker 4: of interviews, a lot of great information on there to
Speaker 4: check out.
Speaker 2: Wow, when you're dressed up too, it looks good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I got I got to wear the sports tacking occasionally,
Speaker 4: not always just wearing the.
Speaker 1: Black on black.
Speaker 2: Look, that's really good man.
Speaker 1: All right, Well let's go ahead and do some picks, because,
Speaker 1: like I said, I have a hard stop. So we'll
Speaker 1: go ahead and start with Steve. Steve, what are your picks?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 2: So don't have anything else outside of the dad jokes
Speaker 2: of the week, So we'll dive right into those. So
Speaker 2: someone threw a can of sodat maybe the other day,
Speaker 2: but I'm okay, it was a soft drink. Simple question.
Speaker 2: A couple of questions here. Why do hummingbirds hum because
Speaker 2: they don't know the words.
Speaker 3: Thank you?
Speaker 2: And finally another question, why do people say tuna fish sandwich?
Speaker 2: Nobody says chicken bird sandwich. Those are the dad jokes.
Speaker 3: Of the week.
Speaker 1: All right, you said you didn't have anything else, that's correct.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm gonna go next. So Claire, you haven't
Speaker 1: been on the show before, so I'll just explain. We
Speaker 1: just shout out about whatever, and so Steve shares the
Speaker 1: best of the dad jokes, and then you know, we'll
Speaker 1: do other things. So I usually pick up board game
Speaker 1: or a card game, and so I'm going to pick
Speaker 1: a called The Infiltrators. Infiltrators came out in twenty thirteen
Speaker 1: or twenty twenty three, sorry, and it's done by Pandasaurus.
Speaker 1: They have other games. It is a two to five
Speaker 1: player card game. And what it is is you have
Speaker 1: a certain number of I guess spies that you're trying
Speaker 1: to or mafia members that you're trying to pinpoint. And
Speaker 1: so what they are is they're face down cards in
Speaker 1: front of each player, and so as you look at
Speaker 1: the there's a delay in my videos striting crazy. So
Speaker 1: as you play, then what you can do is you
Speaker 1: can so I can give a clue on my cards
Speaker 1: or somebody else's cards, but if I play it on
Speaker 1: somebody else's card, then I get to draw a card
Speaker 1: back to my hand. Otherwise I have to take a
Speaker 1: turn to get more cards eventually. And so usually you're
Speaker 1: cluing other people's cards, but sometimes you clue your own
Speaker 1: because you know what yours is and nobody else does,
Speaker 1: so you know. Then you can kind of give people
Speaker 1: the you know, instead of them guessing over and over again,
Speaker 1: you can just basically tell them what it is based
Speaker 1: on what they already know. And so if I put
Speaker 1: put a card on somebody else's they can turn it
Speaker 1: one way or the other that says there's nothing in
Speaker 1: common with this card, or there's something in common with
Speaker 1: this card, and it basically what it can have in
Speaker 1: common is either the numbers on the card. And so
Speaker 1: let's say that you have the fifteen that you play
Speaker 1: over there. Well, the fifteen shows all of the factors
Speaker 1: or multiples of the number, right, So if you play
Speaker 1: a three as three, six, nine, twelve, and fifteen, if
Speaker 1: you play the fifteen, it has one, three, five, and fifteen.
Speaker 1: And so if my card is a one, three, five
Speaker 1: or fifteen, I don't think there were ones anyway. If
Speaker 1: it has any of those numbers, then I'll put it
Speaker 1: down and say there's something common, or if it's the
Speaker 1: same color as something common. But if there's nothing in common,
Speaker 1: then you can eliminate a whole bunch of cards. You
Speaker 1: can you say it's not blue anyway. So it's it's fun,
Speaker 1: and what you're trying to do is you're trying to
Speaker 1: expose what all of the cards are. And so one
Speaker 1: of the things you can do on your turn is
Speaker 1: instead of putting down a clue, you can say you're
Speaker 1: supposed it has a little gun prop and you're supposed
Speaker 1: to execute the card. But we always just say that
Speaker 1: one's the three of red, and then you know, whoever
Speaker 1: had it flips it over and says you're right, or
Speaker 1: if you're wrong, then there are consequences for that. But anyway,
Speaker 1: it's a fun game. Board game geek waits at at
Speaker 1: two point one point one. That's out of five, and
Speaker 1: so it's it's pretty approachable for people for the casual gamer.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I like the deep dark games that are like
Speaker 1: three or three point five and weight. But you know,
Speaker 1: if you just want to pick up a game you
Speaker 1: can play in a half hour, that's a great one.
Speaker 1: And it's just it's a deck of cards, so anyway,
Speaker 1: not a like a a poker deck, but it has
Speaker 1: its own deck. But anyway, super fun. And so I'm
Speaker 1: going to pick that we played it, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like six times the last time I got together with
Speaker 1: my buddies. We get together and we play every Wednesday.
Speaker 1: So we're going to play tonight. We'll see what we play.
Speaker 4: What's the name of the game again.
Speaker 1: Infiltraders, Traders is spelled like traders like people who betray people,
Speaker 1: so it's not the typical spelling of the word. And
Speaker 1: then I'm also going to pick While I was in
Speaker 1: Atlanta last week, I was in the hotel trying to
Speaker 1: just relax, and so I was looking for a show
Speaker 1: to watch and I picked up The Twisted Tale of
Speaker 1: Amanda Knox and Amanda Knox is an American student who
Speaker 1: was studying in Peruja. When I was a missionary in Italy,
Speaker 1: I didn't live that far from Peruja actually anyway, and
Speaker 1: that's been kind of fun for me because like half
Speaker 1: the show's in Italian with subtitles because the Italians are
Speaker 1: speaking Italian. But anyway, so she gets arrested for murder
Speaker 1: and so they're kind of going through the trialing their
Speaker 1: five episod So it's out as we record this and
Speaker 1: it comes out every Tuesday or Wednesday. But yeah, really
Speaker 1: really enjoying that, and so I'm going to pick that show.
Speaker 1: I've also been watching The Terminal List and that has
Speaker 1: Chris Pratt in it. That one's a little bit more violent,
Speaker 1: but I'm enjoying that one as well. Twisted Tale of
Speaker 1: Amanda Knox is on Hulu, which is included in our
Speaker 1: Disney I've been watching on Disney Plus, and then a
Speaker 1: Terminal List is on Amazon Prime. So yeah, I'll pick
Speaker 1: all of those. I'm trying to think what else. But
Speaker 1: I'm going to be speaking at commit Your Code conference
Speaker 1: in at the end of September, and I believe this
Speaker 1: will come out before then. So if you're going to
Speaker 1: be there come find me. And then on the next
Speaker 1: week I'm going to be at Rocky Mountain Ruby Conference
Speaker 1: in Boulder or no, that's two weeks later, but anyway,
Speaker 1: so I'm going to be around if you're in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: Price Picks is based in Atlanta, so I wind up
Speaker 1: out there. So just email me and say, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: in Atlanta. Let me know when you're coming out next
Speaker 1: and I'll let you know. But yeah, those are my picks, Eric,
Speaker 1: what are your picks?
Speaker 2: I good?
Speaker 4: Well, So last night I went to the movie theater
Speaker 4: with my wife and I guess Hamilton has a ten
Speaker 4: year anniversary movie that you can watch, So we watched
Speaker 4: the ten year Anniversary Hamilton movie. That included like ten
Speaker 4: fifteen minutes the beginning of like interviews with the cast
Speaker 4: and everything. So that was kind of a fun evening
Speaker 4: to check it out. Of course, you can get Hamilton
Speaker 4: and Disney plus the movie, but it was nice to
Speaker 4: check that out in the movie theater, which I've never
Speaker 4: watched Hamilton. I've watched it at in Broadway, but I
Speaker 4: have not watched it in a movie theater, which so
Speaker 4: that was fun. So that's my first pick, and then
Speaker 4: I guess the second pick would be I just went
Speaker 4: to Singapore for an AWS event a few weeks ago. Man,
Speaker 4: I love Singapore. I just love the food, the hawker stations,
Speaker 4: the all the amazing gardens. So I highly recommend people
Speaker 4: who want to travel to a nice destination. Have I
Speaker 4: went to Gardens by the Bay, which had this crazy
Speaker 4: light show. They do it like once every day or
Speaker 4: twice a day, and so yeah, great weather, great food,
Speaker 4: highly worth checking it.
Speaker 1: Awesome, Claire, what are your picks?
Speaker 3: Let's see. So I just finished a book called Custodians
Speaker 3: of Wonder by Elliott Stein. Ancient customs, profound traditions, and
Speaker 3: the last people keeping them alive. So this guy went
Speaker 3: and found people who are kind of the end of
Speaker 3: the line. There's a woman in Italy that makes a
Speaker 3: certain kind of pasta that no one else in the
Speaker 3: world knows how to make. Guy in somewhere in Africa
Speaker 3: that a certain story has been passed down for thousands
Speaker 3: of years, and he has to figure out who's the
Speaker 3: next person to pass it down to. It's a super
Speaker 3: super interesting book, Let's see. I have also been on
Speaker 3: the hunt for free public APIs for demos, and there
Speaker 3: is a one that I like that is I can
Speaker 3: has dad joke.
Speaker 5: Yes, thank you, I have actually used that. I'll give
Speaker 5: you a real quick backstory. I did a video for
Speaker 5: view Mastery a few years ago and the way that
Speaker 5: they asked everybody to do a demo project. So what
Speaker 5: I did was a view app that randomly pulled from
Speaker 5: that API and then and displayed a dad joke on
Speaker 5: the screen. So yes, that's great.
Speaker 3: So that's my second pick.
Speaker 1: Awesome, all right. If people want to We've talked about
Speaker 1: like the discord and the YouTube channel, but if people
Speaker 1: want to connect directly with either of you, how do
Speaker 1: they find you.
Speaker 3: I'm on Blue Sky, Claire Libori and LinkedIn.
Speaker 4: Yep, and you can find me at Eric C.
Speaker 1: H E. R I. K.
Speaker 4: Ch on. All the socials are just Eric Hanschett on
Speaker 4: LinkedIn as well.
Speaker 1: Awesome. All right, well, thanks for coming, thank you, wrap
Speaker 1: up until next time. Max Out