We built MiniStack (a local AWS emulator) when LocalStack moved its core services behind a paywall. It runs on a single port at http://localhost:4566, emulates around 60 AWS services, and costs nothing. Day to day, we use it for testing AWS code and for prototyping new services without spending a cent on a real account.
The piece that was missing was the editor side of the loop. We work in Kiro. Kiro is a strong agentic IDE. But every new AWS workflow inside the editor started with the same overhead: telling Kiro where to point the SDK clients, reminding it of the testing patterns we use, walking it through which service does what for the case at hand. Repetitive context we'd already written down somewhere else.
So we pulled all of it into a Kiro Power. The Power ships steering files for the services we use most, a testing workflow file, and a manifest that activates the moment you mention MiniStack or AWS in chat. Kiro picks it up automatically, no manual prompting.
That's what this post is about. It's called MiniStack × Kiro, it's open source, and it's about removing the repetitive context-loading step from every AWS session.
What changes once you install it
