Kiro CLI Setup

Give Kiro CLI persistent memory across sessions.

Kiro CLI (formerly Amazon Q Developer CLI) starts every session from scratch. Claude-mem changes that by capturing observations, decisions, and patterns — then injecting relevant context into each new session.

<Info> **How it works:** Kiro CLI hooks live inside agent configuration files (`~/.kiro/agents/*.json`), not a global hooks file. Claude-mem patches a hooks block into every agent config it finds: `agentSpawn` injects memory from past sessions (Kiro adds the hook's stdout to model context), `userPromptSubmit` registers the prompt and injects semantically relevant observations, `postToolUse` captures every tool call, and `stop` queues a session summary from Kiro's `assistant_response` payload. A local worker service does the storage, compression, and retrieval. </Info>

Prerequisites

Kiro CLI installed (~/.kiro must exist) — macOS/Linux only; use WSL on Windows
Node.js 20+
Bun and uv are auto-installed by the claude-mem installer if missing

Installation

Step 1: Install claude-mem

bash

npx claude-mem install --ide kiro-cli

Or run npx claude-mem install and pick Kiro CLI in the IDE picker (detected via the ~/.kiro directory, which Kiro creates on first run). The installer will:

Merge memory hooks into every agent config in ~/.kiro/agents/ (your own hook entries are preserved; re-running is idempotent). If you have no agents yet, it creates a claude-mem agent you can select with /agent.
Register the claude-mem MCP server in ~/.kiro/settings/mcp.json with read-only search tools auto-approved.
Copy all claude-mem skills to ~/.kiro/skills/ — Kiro implements the same Agent Skills standard, so they work as slash commands (/mem-search, /learn-codebase, …).
Enable per-prompt semantic injection (CLAUDE_MEM_SEMANTIC_INJECT=true) — see Parity for why this is defaulted on for Kiro. The setting is global (it also applies to other claude-mem platforms on this machine); the installer only sets it when you haven't, and uninstall reverts it.
Record everything it touched in ~/.claude-mem/kiro-install.json so uninstall removes exactly that.

Step 2: AI provider — your Kiro subscription, by default

Claude-mem needs an AI provider to compress observations. On Kiro installs this defaults to your Kiro subscription — no API key and no other tools required:

npx claude-mem install --ide kiro-cli defaults CLAUDE_MEM_PROVIDER=kiro (pick another in the provider prompt or pass --provider claude|gemini|openrouter; an installer-written default is reverted on uninstall) and writes a dedicated claude-mem-observer agent to ~/.kiro/agents/ — a hook-less, tool-less agent the worker spawns via headless kiro-cli chat --no-interactive for each compression call. Hook-less is deliberate: it stops the compression chat from being observed by claude-mem itself (recursion guard). Don't add hooks to it.
Requirements: an active kiro-cli login session. Each compression call consumes a small amount of Kiro credits (fractions of a credit per observation batch).
Optional settings: CLAUDE_MEM_KIRO_MODEL (model pinned into the observer agent at install — defaults to claude-haiku-4.5, the cheapest Kiro tier; note the dot notation), CLAUDE_MEM_KIRO_CLI_PATH (non-standard binary location).

Prefer a different backend? All other providers still work — CLAUDE_MEM_PROVIDER accepts claude (needs Claude Code on the same machine), gemini, or openrouter (any OpenAI-compatible endpoint). See Cursor's provider guides; the setup is identical.

Step 3: Verify

bash

npx claude-mem kiro-cli status   # hooks / MCP / skills / unhooked agents
npx claude-mem status            # worker health

Then start a chat (kiro-cli chat), do some work, end the turn, and start a new session in the same project — the injected memory block appears in your agent's context (check with /context show). The live viewer is at the worker URL printed by npx claude-mem status.

Important Kiro-specific behaviour

<Warning> **Hooks are per-agent.** Kiro has no global hooks file, so agents created *after* installation have no memory capture until you re-run `npx claude-mem install --ide kiro-cli` (idempotent — it patches new agents and leaves everything else untouched). `npx claude-mem kiro-cli status` lists unhooked agents. </Warning>

MCP tools in custom agents: agents load mcp.json servers when "includeMcpJson": true (or list "@claude-mem" in tools). The read-only search tools are pre-approved; write tools (build_corpus, observation_*) still prompt.
Session identity: Kiro delivers the session UUID to hooks via the KIRO_SESSION_ID environment variable (verified on kiro-cli 2.11.0 — the documented session_id payload field is absent). In headless mode, --resume was observed to mint a fresh UUID, so a resumed conversation appears as a new claude-mem session; project-level memory is unaffected.

Uninstall

bash

npx claude-mem kiro-cli uninstall

Removes the hook entries (yours stay), the MCP entry, and claude-mem-owned skills; your observation database in ~/.claude-mem is preserved.