From Startup CTO to AWS Contributor: My Kiro Powers Journey
Two things happened this year that I could not have imagined few years ago. First, contributing to an AWS Tier 1 AI product release. Second, seeing my photo on the main stage screen during AWS re:Invent, next to a global map of AWS Heroes.
At this year’s AWS re:Invent I had the honor of being part of a feature launch for AWS Kiro contributing to a new feature called Kiro Powers, which was just announced.
What Are Kiro Powers?
Me, Christian Bonzelet and Allen Helton are featured in the Powers library as first ever contributors to this new and great feature. You could think of this as a bit like a marketplace for development agents.
Kiro Powers extend what Kiro can do by providing specialized capabilities that developers can add to their projects. Instead of one-size-fits-all AI assistance, Powers let you tailor your development environment with domain-specific knowledge and tools.
The Path Nobody Plans
In the beginning of the year when I began my adventure as a startup co-founder, I did not definitely foresee the things I have ended up doing and building when we started our journey. And AWS Kiro is one of the tools that gave me the capabilities and speed to build our vision of our product at lightspeed.
This is why I was happy to contribute when given the chance to also give something back to the community. When you build with a tool every day, you develop an intimate understanding of its strengths and limitations. Contributing back felt natural.
DSQL: The Bleeding Edge
My contribution focused on Aurora DSQL - deploying and managing a distributed SQL database on AWS. For PostgreSQL-compatible serverless distributed SQL databases, my Power helps with managing schemas, executing queries, and handling migrations with DSQL-specific constraints.
DSQL was quite a bleeding edge choice when I started using that and it definitely was a learning journey. The service was brand new, documentation was sparse, and some of the behaviors were… unexpected. But that’s exactly why contributing a Power made sense. I’d already navigated the pitfalls, and I hope this contribution will help others avoid some of the same stumbling blocks.
The distributed nature of DSQL introduces constraints that traditional PostgreSQL doesn’t have. Things like global strong consistency requirements, multi-region considerations, and the serverless scaling model all affect how you write schemas and migrations. These are the kinds of details that are easy to get wrong if you’re coming from a traditional PostgreSQL background.
What This Means for the Community
The Powers model is interesting because it democratizes AI-assisted development beyond what a single company can build. AWS can focus on the core Kiro experience, while practitioners in the community contribute specialized knowledge from their domains.
Think about it: the people who know the most about deploying DSQL aren’t necessarily at AWS - they’re the developers who’ve been building production systems with it. Same for any other AWS service. The Powers marketplace creates a channel for that practical knowledge to flow back into the tooling.
Reflection
In the beginning of this year, I was a newly minted startup CTO figuring out how to build a product. By the end of the year, I’m contributing to one of AWS’s flagship developer tools. That trajectory wasn’t planned - it emerged from showing up, building in public, and being willing to share what I learned.
The AWS community has been a significant part of my professional identity for years. Being recognized as an AWS Hero, attending re:Invent, connecting with other builders - these experiences compound over time. One contribution leads to a conversation, which leads to an opportunity, which leads to something you never could have predicted.
Now go build!
