Kiro Power

Preflight can be installed directly as a Kiro Power, in addition to the npm-based install (npm install -g @newrelic/preflight + preflight setup) described in the main README. Both paths are valid — the Power is an additional distribution channel, not a replacement.

The Power gives you the nr_observe_* MCP tools with nothing pre-installed. Automatic tool-call capture is the one part that still needs the global install, because the hook binary runs on every single tool call and can’t be routed through npx — see Enable automatic tool-call capture.

kiro-power/ uses Kiro’s current Agent Plugins format (plugin.json + mcp.json

skills/) rather than the legacy POWER.md format — this is a requirement, not a preference: Kiro’s own submission page for the curated kiro.dev/powers/ directory states plainly, “Please create your power using the Agent Plugins format… If your power is a good fit for our registry, we will reach out.” The legacy format still installs fine via a direct folder/GitHub-URL import, but isn’t eligible for that curated listing at all.

What you get

MCP tools — all nr_observe_* tools (session stats, cost breakdown, anti-patterns, recommendations, etc.).
Two Agent Skills — setup (first-run onboarding: verify dependencies, wire up hooks, choose local/cloud mode) and observability (documents the nr_observe_* tools so Kiro’s agent reaches for them when relevant).

Activation is contextual, not always-on

Kiro’s docs are explicit about this for the Agent Plugins format: “MCP servers are managed internally by Kiro… They activate and deactivate with the power,” and “powers activate dynamically based on keywords in your conversation.” So nr_observe_* tools aren’t necessarily available the instant this Power is installed — they become available once the conversation touches on something in plugin.json’s keywords list (cost, efficiency, observability, anti-patterns, etc.), or once the setup skill has run. If you ask something entirely unrelated first, don’t be surprised if the tools aren’t there yet — mention Preflight or ask about session cost/efficiency to trigger activation.

This does not affect tool-call capture — once .kiro/hooks/preflight-observability.json exists (see below), Kiro fires it on every tool call independent of whether this Power is currently “active.”

What this doesn’t do automatically

Kiro Powers can’t bundle hooks or executables — plugin.json’s schema has no hooks field, and Kiro’s own directory-tree example for a complete Power (plugin.json + mcp.json + skills/) has no hooks file anywhere. So installing this Power alone does not give you automatic PreToolUse/PostToolUse capture — that’s a one-time manual step, covered by the setup skill (kiro-power/skills/setup/SKILL.md) and summarized again below.

Install

For local testing / peer-to-peer sharing (no review):

Clone this repo (or download it) so you have a local copy of kiro-power/.
In Kiro, open the Powers panel → Add Custom Power → Import power from a folder → select the kiro-power/ directory.
Restart Kiro (or reconnect MCP servers from Kiro’s MCP panel). Ask Kiro’s agent to run Preflight setup (or mention cost/observability) to trigger the setup skill’s onboarding — including wiring hooks for full tool-call capture (see below).

No prior install is needed for the MCP tools: mcp.json fetches the package on demand with npx. Automatic tool-call capture is separate and does still need a global install — see below.

Kiro also supports importing a Power directly from a GitHub repository URL. Whether that flow supports pointing at a subdirectory of a larger repo (like kiro-power/ here) isn’t documented, so the folder-import path above is the one to rely on until that’s confirmed.

For the curated kiro.dev/powers/ directory: submit the public GitHub repo URL via kiro.dev/powers/submit/. Kiro’s stated requirements include: the power is complete/tested/working; plugin.json includes $schema/name/version/description/author/ keywords/license (all present in kiro-power/plugin.json); any MCP server used isn’t in beta/preview status; and the repo’s README includes a privacy policy link and a support contact. This repo’s top-level README doesn’t currently have either of those last two — worth adding before submitting.

Enable automatic tool-call capture

This is Step 2 of the setup skill (kiro-power/skills/setup/SKILL.md) — Kiro’s agent should walk you through it, but you can also do it by hand:

Confirm preflight-collector resolves on PATH: command -v preflight-collector (or run kiro-power/skills/setup/scripts/validate-deps.sh). If it doesn’t, run npm install -g @newrelic/preflight, then re-check. Do this before creating the hook file below — kiro.dev/docs/hooks marks PreToolUse as a blocking trigger, so a hook command missing from PATH would block every tool call in the session, not just skip Preflight’s own observability.

Add .kiro/hooks/preflight-observability.json in your project (not inside kiro-power/ — hooks are workspace-scoped):

{
  "version": "v1",
  "hooks": [
    {
      "name": "Preflight: pre tool call",
      "trigger": "PreToolUse",
      "action": { "type": "command", "command": "preflight-collector" },
      "timeout": 10
    },
    {
      "name": "Preflight: post tool call",
      "trigger": "PostToolUse",
      "action": { "type": "command", "command": "preflight-collector" },
      "timeout": 10
    }
  ]
}

Both entries run the same command — preflight-collector tells pre- from post-call apart from the hook payload’s own hook_event_name field, not a CLI argument (src/hooks/collector-script.ts). Neither sets a matcher; per kiro.dev/docs/hooks, omitting it defaults to always-match.

Restart Kiro. Tool calls now land in ~/.newrelic-preflight/buffer-*.jsonl and feed the nr_observe_* tools above the same way they do for Claude Code, Amazon Q, and Kiro’s other full-hooks peers — see ADAPTERS.md.

Skipping this step silently downgrades the install to MCP-tool-only visibility — nr_observe_health still succeeds, so it can look like everything is working while most of the session goes unobserved.

Cloud mode

This Power’s mcp.json sets NR_AI_MODE: "local" explicitly, so it works with no New Relic account (dashboard at http://127.0.0.1:7777, nothing leaves the machine). To send telemetry to New Relic instead, edit kiro-power/mcp.json’s own env block — add NEW_RELIC_LICENSE_KEY and NEW_RELIC_ACCOUNT_ID, and change NR_AI_MODE to cloud or both. Edit the file directly rather than exporting shell variables: it’s the config Kiro actually reads to launch this server, whereas whether Kiro’s launcher also layers in the host shell environment on top isn’t documented. Never commit real credentials into a shared copy of mcp.json — keep source control on local mode with no credentials, same as this repo’s copy. See ADVANCED.md for the full field reference.

Why `NEW_RELIC_AI_PLATFORM` is set

mcp.json also pins NEW_RELIC_AI_PLATFORM: "kiro". This is load-bearing, not decoration: Kiro exposes no ambient environment variable identifying itself to a child process (a Power’s MCP server gets 16 variables, none of them Kiro-specific), so KiroAdapter.isSupported() cannot detect it and PlatformRegistry.detect() falls through to the generic MCP adapter.

The failure that causes is quiet and easy to miss. Session resolution and the raw tool-call count still work, so the install looks healthy — but Kiro’s tool names (read_file, str_replace, execute_bash) are never mapped to Preflight’s normalized vocabulary, and every metric keyed on a normalized name reports zero: unique_files_read, unique_files_modified, bash_commands_run, and the anti-pattern and cost-per-file analyses built on them. Check nr_observe_get_config reports platform: "kiro" if those numbers ever look implausibly empty.

Packaging

kiro-power/ ships no precompiled hook script and needs no bundle step — a Power can’t carry a hooks file or an executable at all, so there’s nothing to bundle; Enable automatic tool-call capture reuses the already-published preflight-collector bin instead.

kiro-power/mcp.json fetches the package on demand (npx -y @newrelic/preflight@latest --stdio) rather than requiring a global install, so the nr_observe_* tools work on a first-time machine.

That was not always safe, and the reason is worth recording. npx does not run the server directly — it execs an npm exec process which then runs the server, so the server’s parent is that wrapper rather than Kiro. Preflight resolves its session_id by matching its own parent PID against a breadcrumb the hook collector writes at its parent PID, and the wrapper broke that match: session_id never resolved, and every session-scoped tool failed while the MCP connection itself looked perfectly healthy. Kiro’s working-directory fallback can’t rescue it either, because a Power’s server runs with cwd set to the Power’s install directory and never sees the workspace path.

src/hooks/process-ancestry.ts fixes this by walking a few levels up the server’s own ancestry instead of checking only its immediate parent, so the breadcrumb one level above the wrapper is found. This config therefore depends on that fix being present in the published package — pinning @latest is what ties the two together. If you ever see session_id: null on Kiro, check the installed version actually contains the ancestor walk before looking anywhere else.

kiro-power/ ships:

kiro-power/plugin.json — the Power manifest.
kiro-power/mcp.json — the MCP server declaration.
kiro-power/skills/setup/ — the setup Agent Skill (SKILL.md + scripts/validate-deps.sh + references/troubleshooting.md).
kiro-power/skills/observability/ — the observability Agent Skill (SKILL.md), documenting the nr_observe_* tools.

Note: plugin.json’s version field is not auto-synced from package.json — bump both together when cutting a release.

Kiro Power

Kiro Power

What you get

Activation is contextual, not always-on

What this doesn’t do automatically

Install

Enable automatic tool-call capture

Cloud mode

Why NEW_RELIC_AI_PLATFORM is set

Packaging

Why `NEW_RELIC_AI_PLATFORM` is set