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Kiro vs SkeletIQ: feature specs or a critiqued system design
Kiro turns a feature request into a spec: requirements, a design and a list of tasks, which you review phase by phase. SkeletIQ works one level up. It designs the whole system, critiques it against fixed rules, and waits for you to release it before any coding agent builds from it. You may well want both, and this page says where each one fits.
Pick Kiro if you want each feature specced as requirements, a design and tasks that you review phase by phase. Pick SkeletIQ if the whole system needs designing, critiquing and releasing first, with one brief and build order every session works from.
Checked November 12, 2026. Every claim about another product here comes from its own site, docs or repository, checked on the date shown. Report a mistake
What Kiro does well
A spec for every feature and bug fix
Kiro's specs are structured files that formalise how a feature or a bug fix gets built: requirements with acceptance criteria, a design with the technical architecture and sequence diagrams, and a list of discrete tasks. You can start from the requirements or from the design. Either way, the work proceeds from something written down rather than from one long chat. Kiro specs docs (opens in a new tab) Kiro feature specs docs (opens in a new tab)
You review each phase
Before Kiro moves on, you review the requirements and the design. The Review button lets you comment on exact passages and send all your comments to Kiro at once. A quick spec can skip those approval gates when you would rather have all three files straight away, so you choose how much ceremony each change gets. Kiro specs docs (opens in a new tab)
It checks requirements for gaps
Kiro can analyse your requirements for logical inconsistencies, ambiguities, conflicting constraints and gaps before it moves on to the design. That catches a contradiction while it is still a sentence, which is the cheapest place to fix it, rather than in code that someone has to unpick later. Kiro feature specs docs (opens in a new tab)
Where the two differ
One feature, or the whole system
A Kiro spec covers a feature or a bug fix, and its design describes the architecture that piece of work needs. SkeletIQ designs the system those features live in: every component, data store and connection, with a cost estimate and the compliance frameworks it was checked against. Each feature spec then has a released design to agree with, instead of deciding the architecture again. Kiro specs docs (opens in a new tab)
Reviewed by you, or critiqued by fixed rules first
In Kiro, you review each phase of the spec and send your comments back. In SkeletIQ, rules critique the design before you see it, and they give the same findings every time they run. Each finding has a severity, an impact and a remediation, and the design is scored on security, performance, resilience and data. You still release it yourself, starting from a list of weak spots. Kiro specs docs (opens in a new tab)
One brief and build order for every session
Kiro reads steering directives from AGENTS.md, and a released SkeletIQ design writes its brief into that file as a managed block, with a build order keyed to component IDs. So a feature spec can start from the system design without anyone copying it across. Claude Code and opencode can also call check_drift to report what they built against those IDs. Kiro steering docs (opens in a new tab) See a full brief and build order
| # | ID | Component | Technology | Depends on | Why here |
| 1 | cache_layer | Cache Layer (read-through) | Amazon ElastiCache Redis 7 | — | Stateful foundation — everything above it needs somewhere to read and write. |
| 2 | postgres_db | PostgreSQL Database (primary) | Amazon RDS PostgreSQL 14 | — | Stateful foundation — everything above it needs somewhere to read and write. |
| 3 | message_queue | Message Queue (work-queue) | Amazon SQS | — | Decouples what follows; stand it up before its producers and consumers exist. |
| 6 | task_api_service | Task API Service (api) | Node.js with Express | audit_log_service, cache_layer, message_queue, monitoring_service, postgres_db | Business logic. Build it once the stores and queues it depends on are up. |
| 8 | api_gateway | API Gateway (edge) | AWS API Gateway | auth_service, monitoring_service, task_api_service | Entry point — wire it last, when the services behind it can answer. |Which one to choose
Choose Kiro when
- You want a spec for each feature, with requirements, a design and tasks.
- You want to review each phase before the work moves on.
- You want your requirements checked for gaps and contradictions.
Choose SkeletIQ when
- You need the whole system designed before features are specced.
- You want the design critiqued by fixed rules, then released by a person.
- Several sessions should build from one brief and one build order.
Release the system design here, and let Kiro spec each feature against the brief it reads from AGENTS.md.
What SkeletIQ doesn't do
No code and no task lists
SkeletIQ stops at the design. It doesn't write code, break a feature into tasks or run them; your coding agent does that from the brief. If what you need is help planning and building one feature in a codebase that already exists, a feature spec is the closer fit for that job.
Rules don't catch everything
The critique applies rules to the design's structure. It can't tell you that a decision is wrong for your business, and it can miss a problem that no rule describes. Treat a clean critique as a reason to look harder at what is left to decide, not as a sign-off.
Kiro pricing
Kiro prices by plan, and each plan comes with a monthly allowance of credits.
| Plan | Price |
|---|---|
| Kiro Free | Price$0 per month |
| Kiro Pro | Price$20 per user / month |
| Kiro Pro+ | Price$40 per user / month |
| Kiro Pro Max | Price$100 per user / month |
| Kiro Power | Price$200 per user / month |
| Teams and enterprises | Price$20 per seat / month |
as of November 12, 2026 Kiro pricing page (opens in a new tab)
SkeletIQ's plans, and what each includes, are on our pricing page. See SkeletIQ pricing