Welcome all to the blog of AWS Kiro Introduction & re:invent 2025 Hackathon Experience !!
This year, I had got the greatest opportunity of participating in the AWS Hackathon - Road to re:invent 2025, which is one of its kind, AWS Kiro hackathon, organized by Team AWS, Originated from Los Angeles to Las Vegas via a Bus, where 10 different teams participate to hack the challenge set by AWS, competing for $100,000 prize money :-)
Yay, first of all, the experience was thrilling, challenging but need to agree, it was tiring too !! Well, the fun part began, when Team AWS set us the challenge to develop most useless application for a non-existent problem, by including all possible AWS Services to develop & show case using AWS Kiro. Unbelievable yet true !! Who would expect such a challenge from Team AWS? But they did threw this on 10 teams, I was part of Team Pink with 4 other experts in AWS
All 10 teams, 5 Buses, 2 Teams in a Bus, boarded, started shortly after Promo event from Los Angeles. Buses were fully equipped with WiFi, Chairs, Tables to support laptops, snacks, hosting teams, one competing team at the front and other team at the end of the bus, cameras crew in between these two teams, focussing people & happenings
We did break for lunch at "Calico House" for burgers & sandwiches pre-ordered, followed to that, boarded the bus & reached Las Vegas around evening, to the tent set up just close to The Linq, Las Vegas. We were all welcomed with Trumpets, music, cheering up by Team AWS, hosts who supported and other key players who backed up the operations & events for this Hackathon. What a joy !
In the tent, both visionaries in AWS, Swami Sivasubramanian, Jeff Barr came out to the stage, set it on fire, by their introduction about the hackathon event, agenda, each team with a 60 seconds pitch showcased their idea, app developed as per the challenge set. After a few minutes of discussion, Judges announced the winners of Hackathon and launched the re:invent 2025 officially.
Team pink(my team) didn't win but yet, I had the best of the experience & learnings in participating. I still believe that, we should have won, given our use case. I stand to congratulate all the teams that took part, Team AWS, Co-ordinators, Think Tanks behind this, Production Units, Camera crew and everyone !!
Coming to our use case for the hackathon, we developed a front end to simulate the "Seattle Gum Wall" for people to create gum wall at their home or county, ordering gums of flavour, color, origin, pack it to their favourite celebrity to chew & contribute to the gum wall, community borne gum wall displays, thoughts, ideas provisioning, listings. We used AWS Kiro, fed in the use case,AWS Kiro created specification driven tasks to be carried out in order to implement this solution
Technically we used all possible services in AWS starting with Kiro, Amplify, DynamoDB, automated deployment, Cognito, MCP Servers, and many more overly complicating for an non-existent problem :-)
Learnings were invaluable & they were about:
1) Team work - Like other teams, we were different people & personalities of varied talents & capabilities but joined hands to gather for a common purpose. we had our own ice breaking time(not much really) but understood each other preference on the go
2) Commitment - Every one picked up their tasks, provided prompts in spec based development, created & worked on our tasks as divided and stood up to the completion; Close to the end, I wasn't well, and had to swap tasks with the team and I stand proud to know, how well we collaborated
3) Share & Learn - We weren't aware of all the services that were identified to be used, yet, we helped each other giving overview and relied on each others' support, as & when needed
4) Adopt - There were lot of technical glitches(especially for me, from my laptop on committing to GitHub, buffer size, browser compatibility) and all of us adopted to the changes as required. Yet, we overcame and reached the goal at the end, being adaptive to the situation thrown at us !! Yay !!
5) Be united - One among each of the 5 member team, will be elected as Leader, our Team Lead as well, presented our Idea & App to the Judges and though we didn't win, we are happy & content about the use case, our effort and glad that we made it as a team and had a blast
With this experience, I encourage each of the fellow aspirants, to try AWS Kiro and learn about the sensational "Spec driven development" and who knows, this could be the next level or new way of IT development & rollout. The usage & benefits gained could vary based on every requirement, budget, perspectives but it is worth knowing it all !!
Few links to start with:
Official Documentation: https://aws.amazon.com/documentation-overview/kiro/
Start with AWS Kiro: https://kiro.dev
Installation: https://kiro.dev/docs/getting-started/installation/
Spec driven development: https://kiro.dev/docs/specs/
Pricing Page: https://kiro.dev/pricing/
Blogs on Kiro: https://kiro.dev/blog/
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