AWS just released its Cursor killer…

Fireship • 2025-07-16 • 4:07 minutes • YouTube

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Amazon Launches Kira: A New AI-Powered IDE Challenging the Developer Tool Landscape

Yesterday, Amazon surprised the developer community by releasing its own AI-powered Integrated Development Environment (IDE) named Kira. This new tool enters a crowded field of AI-assisted coding editors, competing alongside notable names like Cursor, Windsor, Firebase Studio, and GitHub Copilot. What sets Kira apart is its foundation on Claude Sonnet 4.0 and a unique approach called spec-driven development, which promises better handling of complex projects compared to its rivals. And for now, it’s completely free to use.

The Growing AI IDE Ecosystem

The AI coding assistant market is rapidly evolving. Just recently, Chinese developers introduced Kimmy K2, a lightweight, agentic coding model that rivals Claude in performance. These advancements hint at a future where AI tools might even automatically fix bugs in pirated software—potentially ending the endless internet ridicule of poorly maintained codebases.

In the backdrop of this surge, Amazon’s Kira aims to become a serious contender. The timing is notable: earlier this year, OpenAI’s planned $2 billion acquisition of Windsor, another popular VS Code fork, collapsed. Google then swooped in, recruiting Windsor’s key talent for $2.4 billion, leaving many employees in limbo. Meanwhile, Cognition, the company behind another IDE called Devon, acquired the remaining Windsor assets.

This frenzy underscores a simple truth: companies are willing to pay billions for developer tools that can capture the hearts and workflows of programmers. And the biggest winner so far has been Anthropic, mainly due to the success of its Claude Cloud Code CLI tool. Anthropic’s revenue skyrocketed from under $1 billion to over $4 billion in just one year, with Amazon as a major investor, having poured $8 billion into the company.

The Cursor Dilemma and Kira’s Opportunity

If you’re a user of Claude-powered IDEs, chances are you’ve tried Cursor. While Cursor is powerful, it’s heavily dependent on Anthropic’s Claude model, which puts the startup in a tight spot: it must price its services to eventually turn a profit while footing the bill for Claude’s usage. This led to recent controversial pricing changes that caught many users off guard, resulting in public apologies from Cursor.

Enter Kira, Amazon’s VS Code fork with similar features but a more attractive pricing model that could offer more value for less money. Whether this is a coincidence or a strategic move to undercut Cursor remains unclear, but it certainly shakes up the market.

Hands-On With Kira: A Different Approach to AI Coding

After testing Kira, the user interface impresses with its clean design but feels somewhat slower than competitors. Some expected early-stage bugs appeared, such as missing features like chat checkpoints and occasional delays due to server overload.

The most distinctive feature of Kira is its spec-driven development workflow. Instead of rushing to generate code immediately, Kira encourages developers to begin with a requirements markdown file that outlines user stories and acceptance criteria. This is followed by a design document detailing implementation plans, including component structure, testing strategies, and error handling.

Only after these planning stages does Kira proceed to actual code generation, combining requirements and design into a comprehensive implementation plan. This step-by-step process may feel slower but is ideal for serious software projects or team environments where design documentation and consistent code quality are critical.

Who Is Kira For?

Kira seems tailored for enterprise developers who value thorough planning and collaboration over rapid prototyping. Currently, the IDE is closed-source and exclusively powered by Claude, but Amazon plans to integrate other AI models in the future.

Since Kira is free to use at launch, it’s worth trying out—especially if you’re looking for an AI coding assistant that emphasizes structured development and quality assurance. Whether it can dethrone established players like Cursor remains to be seen.

Learn the Foundations Behind AI Coding Tools

To truly leverage the power of AI in software development, understanding the underlying math and computer science is essential. For those eager to dive deeper, Brilliant.org offers an excellent hands-on course called “How AI Works”, teaching you how to build a language model from scratch and experiment with advanced concepts like feature vectors.

Brilliant’s interactive approach is proven to be six times more effective than passive video lectures. You can try all their courses free for 30 days by visiting brilliant.org/fireship or scanning the QR code below. Plus, you’ll get 20% off an annual premium subscription.

In summary, Amazon’s entry into the AI IDE space with Kira marks an exciting new chapter in developer tooling. With its spec-driven methodology and strong backing, Kira could reshape how coding AI assists teams in building complex software. As always, the race to win developers' loyalty continues—and that means better tools and experiences for everyone.

Thanks for reading The Code Report. Stay tuned for more updates on the future of coding and AI.

Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Brilliant.org.

📝 Transcript (134 entries):

Yesterday, out of nowhere, Amazon released its own AI IDE named Kira. Yet another VS Code fork that will compete for the hearts and minds of programmers alongside editors like Cursor, Windsor, Firebase Studio, and Copilot, just to name a few. It's powered by Claude Sonnet 4.0, but claims to be better at handling complexity than these other sloppy tools thanks to an approach called specdriven development. And right now, it's free to use. But that's not

the only good news for developers. The Chinese just dropped Kimmy K2, an openw weight agentic coding model that approaches the performance of Claude. These tools are so powerful they might even be able to fix pirate software's code is so the entire internet can finally stop dunking on this guy. In today's video, we'll try out Amazon Curo to find out if it truly is the cursor co-pilot killer. It is July 16th, 2025, and you're watching the Code Report. You might remember a few weeks ago when OpenAI was going to buy that other VS Code fork, Windsor, for billions of dollars. Well, that deal fell apart.

Then Google came in and gutted all the talent from the company by convincing them to abandon ship and join Google for $2.4 billion. That screwed over many of the employees at Windsurf, but it's not a total loss because then Cognition, the creator of Devon, is swooped in after Google to buy up all the scraps in what appears to be an all stock deal. We live in a world where people will literally pay you billions of dollars for a VS Code fork because all these companies are desperate to get developers to use their products. But the company taking the lion's share of developer money is anthropic. primarily thanks to its Cloud Code CLI tool. Anthropic went from less than a billion in revenue last year to now over 4 billion this year. And one of

their biggest investors is Amazon, which has pumped $8 billion into the company so far. Now, if you don't use Claude code, there's a good chance you use an IDE like Cursor powered by Claude instead. It's great, but the problem is that Anthropic has cursor by the balls.

If developers want to use Claude, Cursor needs to act as a middleman and price it in a way that can eventually become profitable. Recently, Curser tried to make some tweaks to its pricing that caught some customers offguard because suddenly their vibe coding bill became way higher and Curser had to later come out and apologize publicly. If that weren't bad enough, now here comes Curo.

It's also a VS Code fork with many similar features and based on its initial pricing, it looks like you'll be able to get much more out of Claude for a much lower price. I'm sure it's a total coincidence that Amazon chose to release Kira right now, but let's try it out and find out if it's any good.

Overall, I think the UI looks really nice, but it did feel a bit slow and was missing small features like chat checkpoints and cursor. I also ran into a bunch of delays because the service was overloaded. But these are issues you would expect on an early release product like this. The biggest difference though is that Kira tries to prevent you from generating a bunch of slop all at once.

Rather than go straight to code, it encourages you to start in this requirements MD file, which defines things like the user story and acceptance conditions. Then once that plan is in place, it can move on to the design which is the design document that outlines implementation details like your component structure, your testing strategy, error handling strategy and so on. And then finally, those two documents get combined together to create an implementation plan. Each task will outline the code the AI should write. Then you can click this button in the IDE to start it. Overall, the process felt a bit slower, but it does feel like a much more sane approach if you're building something serious or working with a team of multiple people.

Overall, it feels like an IDE designed to appeal to developers working in enterprise where things like design documents and consistent code quality matters. Currently, Kira is closed source and only powered by Claude, but in the future, they plan to offer other models. Right now, Amazon is offering it for free, so using it's a no-brainer, but only time will tell if it becomes a legit cursor killer. But if you want to harness the full power of AI, you need to understand the math and computer science behind it. And you can do that today for free with Brilliant, the sponsor of today's video. Their how AI works course teaches you how to build a functioning language model from scratch and lets you experiment with things like feature vectors to edit facial expressions and images. This hands-on approach to learning helps you master challenging concepts over time and is proven to be six times more effective than watching video lectures. Try everything Brilliant has to offer for free for 30 days by visiting brilliant.org/fireship or scan the QR code on screen to get 20% off an annual premium subscription. This has been the code report. Thanks for watching and I will see you in the next

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