Dan Kiuna

Dan Kiuna is a specialist solutions architect at AWS who works with the team building Kiro and the developers who use its AI coding tools. Dan and Jonathan Vogel’s guide to Kiro checkpoints explains what happens when a developer undoes part of an agent-assisted refactor. Returning to an earlier point in the conversation restores the whole file for each file Kiro changed after that point. A developer’s later edits to the same file can disappear along with the agent’s edits. Actions the agent took in external systems remain in effect.

From websites to offline cloud apps

Dan started out building websites with PHP, WordPress, and JavaScript. He went on to design enterprise cloud applications, working on how to scale and secure them. At AWS, he worked on Amplify and AppSync before moving to Kiro.

Dan coauthored an AWS tutorial on building a to-do list that works offline. When someone adds an item, TanStack Query saves the previous list and updates the local cache so the item appears immediately. This optimistic update lets the user keep working even if the write to MongoDB Atlas through AppSync has to wait for a connection. If the write fails, the app can restore the previous list.

Packaging instructions and tools for coding agents

Dan and Clare Liguori explained how Kiro adopted Agent Plugins 1.0, a shared format for packaging agent extensions. A team can bundle a skill containing task instructions with a server that supplies tools through the Model Context Protocol (MCP). A manifest and standard file locations let compatible clients find both. Teams can use that format to ship reusable skills inside their existing Kiro extensions, called powers.

Dan and Kalyani Koppisetti used a Stripe power to show how a developer can add a paid subscription tier using Stripe’s instructions and MCP tools inside the editor. When a subscription changes, Stripe sends the application a webhook. Their sample handler verifies Stripe’s signature and branches on the event type. The developer supplies the billing logic, which must account for retries. A notification can pass the signature check each time Stripe delivers it, but processing it twice should have the same effect on billing as processing it once. That is the idempotency requirement for the developer’s handler.

At AI Engineer CODE in November 2026, Dan and Arundeep Nagaraj are scheduled to teach a Kiro Crew workshop on building an unattended agent that flags possible duplicate GitHub issues and explains each match.