Use Cases & Workflows

September 6, 2026 · View on GitHub

Real-world workflows from the Kiro Crew community. These combine Kiro Crew's capabilities — cron jobs, subagents, memory, chat channels, and task runner — into end-to-end automation.

Backlog Crusher

The most powerful workflow: Kiro Crew digs through your issue backlog, picks up tasks, implements them, runs tests, opens pull requests, and handles review comments — all autonomously. It can push 20+ PRs overnight.

The task runner reads a spec you write. Save the steps below as backlog-crusher.md:

# Backlog crusher

1. List open issues in the project's tracker.
2. Pick the highest-priority unassigned issue.
3. Read the issue description and the code it links to.
4. Implement the change.
5. Run the test suite (e.g. `pytest`).
6. Open a pull request targeting the correct branch.
7. Move to the next issue.

Then hand that file to the runner. The path is resolved as given, so run this from the directory holding the file, or pass its absolute path:

kirocrew run backlog-crusher.md

kirocrew run --help lists the flags that matter for a long run: --fresh ignores an existing checkpoint, --no-test skips verification between steps, and --timeout caps the whole run.

For unattended operation with the yolo approval mode, use an isolated KIROCREW_HOME; the gateway refuses --approval yolo for the main data home.

Repetitive Refactors

Automate repetitive cleanup across a codebase. Kiro Crew reads a config or feature-flag list, identifies dead code paths, removes them, and opens pull requests.

Slack → Issue Pipeline

Monitor a Slack channel for incoming requests and auto-create issues. Your coding Kiro Crew instance picks them up automatically.

Setup:

  1. Enable observe mode for the source channel.
  2. Create a cron job: "Every hour, check #my-channel for new requests and create issues for actionable items"
  3. Your backlog crusher picks up the new tasks

Daily Briefings

Schedule morning briefings that summarize what matters:

  • "Every weekday at 9am, give me a CI/pipeline health summary"
  • "Every Monday at 8am, list my open pull requests and their review status"
  • "Every day at 5pm, summarize today's Slack activity in #my-team"

These run as cron jobs with results posted to your Slack DM.

Use skip_dates and timezone to skip holidays or vacation days — the next run automatically covers the gap. See Cron Jobs.

Parallel Research

Fan out research across multiple sources simultaneously:

"Research EC2 pricing changes across all regions"

Kiro Crew spawns subagents — one per region or source — and synthesizes the results into a single summary.

Auto-Collect Information

Replace manual information-gathering workflows. Use Kiro Crew cron jobs to gather data from your sources and publish to a dashboard or static site.

Oncall Automation

  • "Every 30 minutes, check my service health and alert me if anything is red"
  • "When I get paged, pull the last 15 minutes of logs for my service"
  • Combine with a custom oncall skill for ticket triage

Code Review Assistance

Select an installed review agent from the terminal:

kirocrew agent list
kirocrew chat --agent <installed-review-agent>

The agent reads the pull-request diff, checks for common issues, and posts review comments.

Multi-Agent Workflows

List available agents with kirocrew agent list, then select one for a CLI chat with kirocrew chat --agent <agent-name>.

Each installed agent has its own system prompt, tools, and skills — scoped via per-agent MCP configuration.

Tips from the Community

  • Unattended overnight runs: Use an isolated KIROCREW_HOME when running the gateway with --approval yolo. Review the CRs in the morning.
  • Workspace isolation: Use KIROCREW_HOME and KIROCREW_PORT env vars to run multiple Kiro Crew instances with separate data.
  • Background gateway: Use a macOS Launch Agent or systemd service to keep the gateway running across reboots (see Getting Started).