DEV Community

The essential guide to installing Kiro CLI on Windows

Ricardo Sueiras on March 31, 2025

Update Amazon Q CLI is now Kiro CLI so I thought I would update this post for those of you who want to get Kiro CLI up and running on Wi...

Read full post

kowalsk • Jul 12

This is great, thank you for taking the time to do this, it got me started in no time :)

Divyansh Kumar • Aug 30

Thanks for your help! Great learning from you.

Ricardo Sueiras AWS • Aug 31

Thank you!

Avinash sarraf • Nov 18

Hello AWS Team, I noticed a small inconsistency. The downloaded file is named kirocli.zip, but the provided unzip command is unzip kiro-cli.zip. Could you please update one of them for consistency?

Ricardo Sueiras AWS • Nov 18

Ahh thanks - I will fix this typo.

Homan • Nov 18

Hi anyone can help me. I was using Amazon Q CLi fine , then once i did the upgrade, it just doesnt work anymore:

Kiro is having trouble responding right now:
0: Failed to send the request: An unknown error occurred: AccessDeniedException
1: An unknown error occurred: AccessDeniedException
2: unhandled error (AccessDeniedException)
3: service error
4: unhandled error (AccessDeniedException)
5: Error { code: "AccessDeniedException", message: "Feature is not supported", aws_request_id: "03ce23b8-4563-436e-9380-709871bd2aa9" }

Location:
crates/chat-cli/src/cli/chat/mod.rs:1176

Backtrace omitted. Run with RUST_BACKTRACE=1 environment variable to display it.
Run with RUST_BACKTRACE=full to include source snippets.

Ricardo Sueiras AWS • Nov 19

How are you logging into Kiro, using social login, Builder ID or Identity Centre account?

Ricardo Sueiras AWS • Nov 19

So one question. Do you use a Builder ID that you then upgraded using /subscribe to upgrade from FreeTier to Pro tier?

Indu Teja • Nov 19

Same issue, unable to use cli chat after update? anyone is using windows OS and able to connect to kiro-chat

Ricardo Sueiras AWS • Nov 19

How are you logging into Q CLI / Kiro CLI? Have you tried logging out and trying to log in?

Ricardo Sueiras AWS • Nov 19

Ok so a fix for this issue is being worked on and I’ll update here with news once I have it

Ricardo Sueiras AWS • Nov 19

So one question. Do you use a Builder ID that you then upgraded using /subscribe to upgrade from FreeTier to Pro tier?

Uhsarp A • Aug 8

It worked fine when I installed it yesterday.
Today when I try to open chat, it asked for login. While logging in, I get this error

q/bin$ q login ✔ Select login method · Use for Free with Builder ID error: dispatch failure

Ricardo Sueiras AWS • Aug 8

Ok a couple of things to try. First of all, can you try "q logout" and then try and login from scratch to see if that fixes the issue. If that does not work, can you see if you are running the latest version of Q CLI, which you can find by running "q update". If you are running the latest version, then the only other thing I can think of is that it might be a service degradation issue. If you can try later and see if you get the same error and let me know.

Ricardo Sueiras AWS • Aug 8

Mmmm, I will check this out. Not seen that message before.

HP-85 • Aug 14

Great article - thank you!

The instructions in the Q CLI User Guide - Installing with a zip file - seems to work for installing on WSL in both Windows 11 x64 and arm64.

Here's an example of using Q CLI from WSL to interact with Windows:

> how do I query windows system event log for event ID 6009

> You can query the Windows System Event Log for event ID 6009 from WSL using PowerShell. Here are several approaches:
## Using Get-WinEvent (recommended)
bash
powershell.exe -Command "Get-WinEvent -FilterHashtable @{LogName='System'; ID=6009}"

 ● I will run the following shell command:
powershell.exe -Command "Get-WinEvent -FilterHashtable @{LogName='System'; ID=6009}"
 ⋮
 ↳ Purpose: Query Windows System Event Log for event ID 6009 using PowerShell Get-WinEvent
Allow this action? Use 't' to trust (always allow) this tool for the session. [y/n/t]:
> y
   ProviderName: EventLog

TimeCreated                      Id LevelDisplayName Message
-----------                      -- ---------------- -------
8/7/2025 9:41:26 AM            6009 Information      Microsoft (R) Windows (R) 10.00. 22631  Multiprocessor Free.
8/6/2025 12:13:42 PM           6009 Information      Microsoft (R) Windows (R) 10.00. 22631  Multiprocessor Free.
8/5/2025 8:07:40 AM            6009 Information      Microsoft (R) Windows (R) 10.00. 22631  Multiprocessor Free.

Saran Tanpituckpong • Aug 5

No native Windows PowerShell support? 😢

Ricardo Sueiras AWS • Aug 6

No, although if you check out the demo video, you can see that I create powershell scripts within wsl when using Amazon Q CLI, so it is possible just not in the same terminal session. Watch this space though, as there is a native Windows installer on the roadmap, and so hopefully this will come along soon. In the meantime, as this is an open source project I am aware of a few folk who have compiled windows native binaries. Check out this repo and see if this works for you -> github.com/DiscreteTom/amazon-q-de...

Uhsarp A • Aug 8

Nice try. Wnidows defender detects a virus.

Ricardo Sueiras AWS • Aug 8

ahh really, ok I will make sure that I dont recommend that link to others. One colleague tried to run it and said it didnt do anything (just got back to me an hour ago). Man, need to get myself a windows machine.