How I Built a Kiro Crew App in 5 Minutes - Full Tutorial With Code

Description and use

Quick guide to building a Kiro Crew app in five minutes: define manifest, agent, skill, cron, and dashboard, install via curl, and publish to the App Store.

Problem

Developers need a quick way to create fully functional, installable AI-powered apps for Kiro Crew without writing extensive code or managing infrastructure.

Outcome

The tutorial demonstrates that a fully functional Kiro Crew app can be built in five minutes using a concise manifest, a simple agent, a markdown skill, a lightweight UI, and a cron job. The app auto‑generates daily standup notes from git commits and exposes a dashboard page, all installable with a single curl command and publishable to the App Store.

Workflow

• 1. Create app directory structure with app.json, agent, skill, UI, and cron definitions.
• 2. Write app.json manifest declaring name, version, agents, skills, UI entry, and cron schedule.
• 3. Define standup-agent.json with model, prompt, and @kirocrew-core tool access.
• 4. Create standup-format skill as a markdown file with formatting rules.
• 5. Build a minimal React dashboard page using @kirocrew/app-sdk UI components.
• 6. Install the app via curl POST to /api/apps/install with source path.
• 7. Enable the app via curl POST to /api/apps/<name>/enable to register agents, skills, and crons.
• 8. Verify installation by checking the sidebar for the new dashboard page and running the agent manually.
• 9. Publish to the App Store by adding an entry to app-registry.json and merging a PR into the registry repository.

Evidence

5-min demo: custom agent + skill + cron job + dashboard page, installed live with one curl command.

Source

The app kit is a package that contributes any combination of agents, skills, MCP servers, cron jobs, UI pages, and backend processes.

Source

Install (one command - point to your app directory)

Source