From Zero to Deployed: Setting Up My AWS Dev Environment on Windows

Setting up AWS CLI, Kiro CLI, and CDK on Windows — including two spots where the official guide's commands don't work as-is, and how I fixed them.

Kiev Gonzales

BSIT Student | Aspiring Cloud Engineer

Published Aug 30, 2026

Last modified Aug 30, 2026

I'm a BSIT student working toward cloud engineering, and today I set up my first real AWS dev environment from scratch — AWS CLI, Kiro CLI, an MCP server for live AWS docs, and a deployed project, all in one sitting. Here's what actually happened, including where the official guide didn't quite match my setup.
What I builtFollowing AWS Builder Center's dev environment guide, I got the AWS CLI installed and connected to my account, Kiro CLI set up as an AI coding assistant in my terminal, and then used CDK (Infrastructure as Code) to deploy an SNS topic that emails me whenever something is published to it. When that test email landed in my inbox, it confirmed the whole chain worked: CLI → Kiro → CDK → AWS.
Windows-specific gotchasThe guide's steering-file setup uses  mkdir -p  and  curl -fsSL , which are bash commands and don't run in PowerShell. I used the equivalents instead:
﻿ 
 New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force -Path "$HOME\.kiro\steering" 
 
  Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "<url>" -OutFile "$HOME\.kiro\steering\aws-agent-rules.md"
 ​ 
I also hit an issue where  kiro-cli mcp add --url  isn't a supported flag in the current CLI version. Instead, I configured the MCP server directly by creating  ~/.kiro/settings/mcp.json  with the server URL inside:
JSON
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "aws-mcp": {
      "url": "https://aws-mcp.us-east-1.api.aws/mcp"
    }
  }
}
Kiro picked it up automatically on save, no restart needed.
What's nextWith the environment working, I used the same setup to deploy a personal portfolio site on AWS Amplify — live HTTPS, CDN, deployed in minutes. If you're a fellow student on Windows following these guides, hopefully this saves you some troubleshooting time.

# aws-cli # aws-cdk # kiro # getting-started # free-tier-projects