AWS Transform introduces the agent builder toolkit Kiro power for building customized transformation agents
Partners and customers can now build and publish custom modernization agents that plug directly into AWS Transform's agentic AI platform via the Kiro marketplace.
View original announcement →Visual Summary
graph TD
A{{Agent Builder Toolkit Kiro Power}}:::announced
B(AWS Transform):::compute
C([Custom Agents]):::feature
D([Knowledge Bases & Workflows]):::feature
E((Partners & ISVs)):::external
F((Customers)):::external
G([Kiro Marketplace]):::feature
H([Agent Discovery & Registry]):::feature
E ==>|"build agents"| A
F ==>|"build agents"| A
A -->|"integrates with"| B
A -->|"creates"| C
A -->|"embeds"| D
C -->|"registered in"| H
H -->|"enables discovery"| B
C -.->|"distributed via"| G
G -.->|"shared across"| E
classDef announced fill:#ff9900,stroke:#ec7211,color:#fff,font-weight:bold
classDef compute fill:#e3f2fd,stroke:#1565c0,color:#1565c0
classDef storage fill:#e8f5e9,stroke:#2e7d32,color:#2e7d32
classDef feature fill:#fff3e0,stroke:#e65100,color:#e65100
classDef external fill:#f5f5f5,stroke:#616161,color:#616161
What's New
AWS has announced the general availability of the agent builder toolkit powered by Kiro, a new capability within the AWS Transform composability initiative. This toolkit enables AWS Partners, ISVs, and customers to build, share, and register custom transformation agents that integrate seamlessly with AWS Transform's agentic AI platform. The release marks a significant expansion of AWS Transform's extensibility, allowing specialized modernization logic to be packaged and distributed through the Kiro marketplace.
How It Works
- Build: Developers use the Kiro-powered agent builder toolkit to construct custom transformation agents, embedding specialized tools, knowledge bases, and workflows tailored to specific modernization scenarios (e.g., mainframe refactoring, custom framework migrations).
- Integrate: Custom agents connect directly with AWS Transform's existing agentic AI capabilities, including its assessment, code analysis, dependency mapping, and transformation planning engines, ensuring interoperability within the platform.
- Share: Completed agents can be shared within internal teams or distributed across partner networks, enabling reuse and collaboration across organizations.
- Register: Agents are registered with AWS Transform's discovery layer, making them findable and deployable by other users or partners within the ecosystem.
- Distribute: The agent builder toolkit and finished agents are available through the Kiro marketplace, providing a centralized distribution and discovery channel.
- Lifecycle management: The toolkit covers the full end-to-end agent lifecycle—from initial development through sharing, versioning, and production registration.
Why It's Important
- Extensibility at scale: AWS Transform was previously limited to AWS-built agents; this toolkit opens the platform to a broad ecosystem of partner- and customer-built agents, dramatically expanding the range of supported modernization scenarios.
- Partner differentiation: Migration and Modernization Competency Partners and ISVs can now encode their proprietary methodologies and domain expertise into agents, creating defensible, differentiated offerings on top of AWS Transform.
- Reduced custom development overhead: Customers with unique legacy environments no longer need to build bespoke tooling from scratch; they can extend AWS Transform directly rather than maintaining parallel toolchains.
- Ecosystem network effects: As more agents are registered and shared, the Kiro marketplace becomes a compounding resource—each new agent increases the platform's value for all participants.
- Accelerated modernization timelines: Custom agents can automate organization-specific transformation patterns that generic agents cannot handle, reducing manual effort on complex, one-of-a-kind migrations.
How It's Different
- Platform composability vs. monolithic tooling: Unlike traditional migration tools that offer fixed workflows, AWS Transform's composability initiative allows agents to be mixed, matched, and layered, giving teams fine-grained control over their transformation pipeline.
- Kiro-native development: Agents are built using the Kiro IDE/power environment, which provides an AI-assisted development experience purpose-built for agentic workloads, rather than requiring generic coding frameworks.
- First-class marketplace distribution: The Kiro marketplace provides a structured, discoverable channel for agent distribution—distinguishing it from ad-hoc script sharing or proprietary partner portals.
- Seamless AWS Transform integration: Custom agents inherit AWS Transform's shared workspaces, natural language chat, progress tracking, and parallel execution capabilities without additional integration work.
- Partner-grade lifecycle support: The toolkit is explicitly designed for Migration and Modernization Competency Partners, meaning it meets enterprise-grade standards for sharing, versioning, and governance—not just developer prototyping.
When to Prefer It
- Organization-specific legacy patterns: When a customer has proprietary frameworks, internal APIs, or custom codebases that AWS Transform's standard agents do not cover out of the box.
- Partner-led engagements: When a Migration and Modernization Competency Partner wants to deliver a repeatable, branded transformation methodology across multiple customer engagements using a single registered agent.
- ISV product differentiation: When an ISV wants to embed its modernization tooling within the AWS Transform ecosystem rather than maintaining a standalone competing product.
- Large-scale parallel modernization: When hundreds of applications need to be transformed simultaneously and custom automation logic is required to handle edge cases at scale.
- Knowledge base integration: When a team has accumulated deep institutional knowledge (runbooks, transformation rules, architectural standards) that should be codified into an agent rather than applied manually each time.
- Cross-team agent reuse: When multiple internal teams or business units need access to the same specialized transformation logic and a governed sharing mechanism is required.
Availability
- GA Status: Generally available as of May 14, 2026.
- Access point: Available through the Kiro marketplace; agents are registered with AWS Transform for discovery.
- Supported workloads: Designed to complement AWS Transform's existing support for mainframe, VMware, Windows (.NET/SQL Server), and custom code modernization scenarios.
- Eligible builders: AWS Migration and Modernization Competency Partners, ISVs, and direct customers can all build and register agents.
- Pricing: Specific pricing details were not disclosed in the announcement; refer to the AWS Transform pricing page (aws.amazon.com/transform) for current information.
- Regional availability: Specific supported AWS regions were not detailed in the announcement; consult the AWS Transform documentation for region-by-region availability.
- Limitations: The announcement does not specify API quotas, agent size limits, or governance controls; further technical documentation via the AWS Transform page is recommended before production use.
