DEV Community: Prince Andrew Anire

Using Kiro CLI Headless Mode to Review Terraform Dependabot PRs at Scale

Prince Andrew Anire — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 09:53:59 +0000

Reviewing Terraform Dependabot PRs is one of those tasks that's individually easy but collectively exhausting. For a single PR, the routine is simple: read the changelog for the version bump, check for breaking changes, run terraform validate, and maybe run terraform plan against the environment to be sure nothing unexpected happens on apply.

The problem shows up at scale. If you're managing hundreds of Terraform module repositories, each accumulating Dependabot PRs over time, that "simple" routine multiplies into tens or hundreds of near-identical reviews. It's repetitive, it's easy to rush, and it's exactly the kind of work that eats a day without producing much.

Enter Headless Mode

I recently came across Brian Beach's post introducing headless mode in Kiro CLI, and it turned out to be a good fit for this exact problem. If you want the full picture, the official headless mode docs are worth a read too.

The short version: headless mode lets you hand Kiro CLI a single prompt, run it non-interactively, and let it work through the task on its own — no interactive terminal session required. That distinction matters for how I think about scripting in general. Bash or PowerShell are still the right tools for deterministic, repeatable steps — checkout a repo, install a CLI, grep a file. But version-bump review isn't really deterministic. It requires reading a changelog, judging whether a change is breaking, and deciding what "safe to merge" actually means for this specific bump. That's reasoning work, and it's where headless mode complements scripting rather than replacing it.

Getting set up is straightforward:

Generate an API key from the Kiro web portal under Settings → API Keys
Set it as the KIRO_API_KEY environment variable
Run something like:

   kiro-cli chat --no-interactive "Review this PR"

That's it — no browser login, no interactive session, just a prompt in and a response out.

Wiring It Into GitHub Actions

Once headless mode is available, the natural next step is a GitHub Actions workflow that triggers whenever a Terraform Dependabot PR opens. Kiro CLI reviews the changelog, runs terraform init and terraform validate, and reports back whether the bump looks safe to merge as-is or carries risk — a breaking change, a failed validate, whatever it finds.

If you want to optimize further, you can scope Kiro down to just the changelog and diff review, and leave init/validate to a separate, more deterministic step — worth considering if you want tighter control over exactly what Kiro's tool access can touch.

Here's my sample workflow file:
👉 kiro-terraform-dependency-review.yml

What the workflow does, step by step

Checkout — pulls full repo history (fetch-depth: 0), needed so the diff step can compare against the base branch
Setup Terraform — installs Terraform via hashicorp/setup-terraform, with a slot ready for a private registry token when needed
Install Kiro CLI — downloads and installs kiro-cli on the runner
Get PR diff — captures a git diff of just the .tf files between the base branch and the PR
Run Kiro dependency review — pipes that diff into kiro-cli chat --no-interactive --trust-all-tools, with a prompt instructing Kiro to:
- Fetch the changelog or release notes for the bumped provider/module and flag anything breaking
- Run terraform init and report pass/fail
- Run terraform validate and report pass/fail
- Return all three in a fixed markdown structure — ## Changelog Summary, ## terraform init, ## terraform validate — with explicit Status: pass/fail lines, so the output is consistent enough to parse later
Clean the output — strips ANSI escape codes and trims everything before the first ## Changelog Summary heading, so tool-invocation logs don't leak into the PR comment
Check review status — greps the cleaned report for Status: fail and sets a flag
Post the review as a PR comment — with a header showing ⚠️ Issues Found or ✅ Checks Passed
Request changes if checks failed — automatically submits a GitHub "Request Changes" review when something's wrong
Fail the job if checks failed — exits non-zero, so this can be wired up as a required status check and actually gate merges

Seeing It in Action

The result: Dependabot opens a PR, Kiro reads the diff, pulls the real changelog, runs the actual Terraform commands, and reports back — automatically, on every single PR, without me touching it.

It's already caught a real compatibility conflict in testing — a module bump that required a newer AWS provider than the repo was pinned to, which terraform init correctly failed on before anything got merged.

Now I've got Kiro reviewing Dependabot PRs across my Terraform repos and telling me, up front, whether they're safe to merge — which is exactly the kind of repetitive-but-judgment-requiring work I wanted to get off my plate.

Cheers!

Are you a student learning about cloud 🌥? Here are 4 resources that give free cloud credits, courses and many more!

Prince Andrew Anire — Sat, 03 Jun 2023 01:48:41 +0000

hands-on experience is important when you are learning about cloud computing, however, doing hands-on activities can often be cost-prohibitive especially when you are a student, fortunately, there are resources and programs you can apply that gives free cloud credits to be used on cloud providers such as Digital Ocean and Microsoft Azure, cloud certification vouchers and courses! Excited? keep on reading to learn more about those resources.

1.) GitHub Student Developer Pack

GitHub Student Developer Pack is a collection of student-only benefits from several tech companies such as Digital Ocean, Microsoft and GitHub. GitHub Student Developer Pack gives you access to products and tools such as GitHub Copilot, cloud credits to Microsoft Azure, Heroku and Digital Ocean and courses such as educative, data camp and many more!

To Sign up for Student Developer Pack you only need a GitHub account, student ID and/or school-issued email address.

To learn more about this awesome program, check out this link:
The GitHub Student Developer Pack delivers $200k worth of tools and training to every student

2.) Microsoft Azure for Students Starter Offer

Microsoft Azure for Students starters gives you limited access to Azure products and services such as Azure App Services, Azure Functions and Azure DevOps.

Microsoft Azure for Students Starter is available for high school students - you don't need a credit card to sign up for the Students Starter

for more information about Microsoft Azure for student's starter see:
Microsoft Azure for Students Starter Offer

3.) AWS re/Start

AWS re/Start is a training program that helps you upskill for careers in the cloud and connects you to potential employers. AWS re/Start is free to apply and upon enrollment you will gain hands-on experience in Linux, Python and core AWS Cloud Skills

AWS re/Start also helps you train for cloud roles such as cloud automation, infrastructure engineering and system administration.

To learn more about that program see:
AWS re/Start

4.) Microsoft Learn Student Hub

Microsoft Learn Student Hub is a collection of learning modules, student certifications and even provides opportunities for community involvement programs.

You can learn more about Artificial Intelligence engineering, Data Science, Software Development and many more on the Microsoft Learn Student Hub

Explore Microsoft Learn Student Hub by visiting this link:
MICROSOFT LEARN
Student Hub

Working on an idea for a startup? Microsoft could help you with that - here's how.

Prince Andrew Anire — Sat, 20 May 2023 01:37:09 +0000

If you have an idea for a startup, and you are looking for resources and support to help you get started prototyping a product or even building your own software as a service - Microsoft could help you with that, here's how.

Before that, let me explain a bit about startups

What is a startup?
As a developer, why should you look for resources and support to help you out with working on an idea for your
startup
several companies you could try looking into to help you out with your startups (i.e. AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and even your government)

What is a startup anyway?

a startup in its formal defintion is just a newly established business, A business that aims to introduce innovative products and create new business model that address societal and market needs - In other words, start-ups work on providing a new product or service that aims to solve a problem and hopefully make money solving that problem

Why look for resources and support when you're working on an idea for a startup?

as a developer, having an idea for a startup is just a start - you need to validate your idea and refine your idea and prototype your product and usually iterate and change your product as assumptions got validated - all those usually takes time and effort.

Looking for resources and support (such as the Microsoft Startup Founders Hub) even if you only have an idea is great because:

those programs usually have expertise when it comes to helping early-stage startups
they usually provide you opportunities to network and connect with industry experts to help you validate idea and provide you tools to help you prototype your product as assumptions come and go
you get access to training and support, you as an early-stage founder would find helpful

What is Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub?

It is a platform that helps you turn your idea into a viable business by providing you with resources, guidance, and support - this include OpenAI, Azure, Bubble, and many more.

With Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub, you get:

learn from experts and mentors who have been there and done things.
connect with other startup founders who are on the same journey as you.
get valuable feedback and validation for your idea and product.
find potential customers, partners, and investors for your startup
get access to tools and services to help you build, deploy your production

and the best part, no funding is required - only a LinkedIn account or a Microsoft account is needed to get started applying to the program.

Conclusion:
Microsoft for Startups Founder Hub is a wonderful way to get started working on your idea for a startup. It can help you avoid common pitfalls, learn from best practices, and accelerate your progress. So, what are you waiting for? Try signing up today and see what Microsoft for Startups Founder Hub can do for you!

Get started securing your AWS resources with these tools.

Prince Andrew Anire — Tue, 09 May 2023 13:32:33 +0000

In this post, we're going to look at four open-source tools to help you get started securing your AWS resources.

1.) Service Screener

Service Screener is a tool from AWS that checks your AWS account and provides you with suggestions to improve the security of your AWS resources such as EC2, RDS, S3, Lambda, etc.

Service Screener runs on AWS Cloud Shell, a terminal accessible via the AWS Management Console.

The AWS Account you're going to use to run Service Screener requires a bit of read permissions on several resources.
After running Service Screener on your AWS Cloud Shell, Service Screener would output a HTML file that had dashboards that lets you see its recommendations.
for more information on how to get started using it look at the GitHub repository, see Service Screener

2.) Cloud Custodian

Cloud Custodian is a tool in which you write YAML files to find unsecure or misconfigured resources such as EC2 instance having port 22(SSH)open to all or s3 buckets that are publicly accessible, Cloud Custodian can also be used to secure resources from other cloud providers such as Google Cloud and Azure.

although, there is a bit of a learning curve as you need to learn YAML and some command line commands, it is worth the trouble as you would be able to use cloud custodian to secure your resources on several cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud mostly for free or much less cost compared to security tools offered by cloud platforms(although those often had free tier, beyond free tier they would cost money as long as you are using the service)

If you'd like to a more in-depth introduction to cloud custodian, here are some of the resources i found helpful:

3.) Prowler

Prowler is another for checking your AWS resources for best security practices,
Prowler is a CLI to help you check the security of your AWS resources against several compliance programs such as CIS, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, etc.

You can use Prowler on your computer or just an EC2 instance.

here are few of the resources you can take advantage to get started using Prowler:

4.) ElectricEye

ElectricEye is a Python command line interface tool in helping you with checking the security of your AWS resources and dealing with potentially vulnerable resources.
ElectricEye checks are comprehensive - covering over 320 checks and 80 services to help you with securing your AWS resources.

Here some of the resources I found that gets you up to speed with using this awesome and powerful tool:

5.) HashiCorp Sentinel

Sentinel is a policy as a code framework for creating and enforcing policies against resources managed by Terraform - It is available in Terraform Cloud and Terraform Enterprise,
the basic workflow is that you write sentinel policies, and those policies will check against your configurations files before running terraform apply notifying you if there is non-compliant resources.