Building a Slack-powered AI development agent with Kiro CLI and headless authentication

This article demonstrates building a Slack-integrated AI development agent using Kiro CLI with headless authentication, AWS Lambda, and API Gateway to eliminate context-switching during code analysis tasks.

• Use Slack slash commands to trigger Kiro CLI analysis without leaving chat
• Implement headless authentication with API keys stored in AWS Secrets Manager
• Deploy a two-Lambda architecture: Dispatcher acknowledges within 3 seconds, Worker runs async analysis
• Package Kiro CLI in a container image pushed to Amazon ECR due to 250 MB Lambda layer limit
• Verify Slack requests using HMAC-SHA256 signing secret validation
• Post results directly to Slack via response_url webhook within 30-minute expiration window
• Deploy infrastructure with AWS SAM template defining both functions and API Gateway endpoint

The solution eliminates engineering context-switching by bringing code analysis directly into Slack workflows, reducing time spent navigating repositories and terminals.