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Get Started Installation Authentication Your first project Models Overview Available models Reasoning effort Features How Kiro works Specs Steering Hooks MCP Permissions Custom agents Agent Skills Powers Cloud sessions Compaction Kiroignore Checkpoints and rewind Built-in tools Configuration scopes IDE 1.x What's new in 1.0 Setup & First Run Editor Chat Experimental Troubleshooting 0.x reference CLI What's new in 3.0 Setup & First Run Terminal UI Chat Session management Goal Queue steering In-session settings Prompts File references Context management Responding to messages Working with Git Images Custom diff tools Voice mode Headless mode ACP Auto complete Experimental 2.x reference Crew Quick start Installation Running 24/7 Chat Agent Capabilities Features Interfaces Apps System & storage Configuration Security Troubleshooting Web Setup & First Run Identity Center Connect your repositories Working with the agent Autonomous mode Automations Memory Configuration Sync Sandbox Mobile - Preview Overview Commands and Reference CLI commands Slash commands Built-in tools Exit codes Settings Billing Overview Managing your subscription Upgrading your plan Downgrading your plan Cancelling your plan Purchasing add-on credits Managing your payments Managing usage notifications Managing your taxes Contacting billing support Deleting your account Related questions Enterprise Concepts Onboarding quickstart Connecting your identity provider Deployment options Subscribe your team Manage subscriptions Governance Monitor and track Settings Managed updates Billing IAM Supported regions Privacy and Security Overview Data protection Code references Compliance validation Infrastructure security IAM permissions Firewalls, proxies, and data perimeters VPC endpoints (AWS PrivateLink) Guides Overview Language support Learn by playing Migration Migrating from Q Developer Migrating from VSCode Upgrading from Q CLI * Docs * * CLI * * Chat * * In-session settings Copy page View as Markdown In-session settings Copy page View as Markdown Run /settings to change how Kiro looks and behaves — colors, keyboard shortcuts, multi-line input, display toggles, and prompt history scope — without leaving your chat session. Run /settings on its own to open the menu, or jump straight to a subcommand with /settings <subcommand> . Available subcommands: theme , keybindings , terminal , display , and history . Subcommands /settings theme Customize the colors used for prompt input and agent response text. The theme wizard walks you through customization step by step — pick a base theme, adjust specific elements, then confirm. The live preview renders actual conversation output so you see exactly how your theme looks in practice. bash /settings theme The theme system uses named ANSI colors, so your customizations render correctly across terminals with different color palettes. Falls back to safe ANSI colors when terminal color detection has low confidence. /settings keybindings View the current keyboard shortcut configuration. This is a read-only reference showing all configurable bindings and their current values. bash /settings keybindings To change keybindings, use the kiro-cli settings command: bash kiro-cli settings chat.keybindings.cancelStream "ctrl+x" kiro-cli settings chat.keybindings.closeMenu "ctrl+[" kiro-cli settings chat.keybindings.quit "ctrl+shift+q" See Key bindings (terminal UI) for the full reference. /settings terminal Enable Shift+Enter and Option+Enter as newline shortcuts in your terminal. If pressing Shift+Enter currently submits your prompt instead of inserting a newline, this command fixes it by auto-detecting your terminal and applying the appropriate key binding configuration. bash /settings terminal Terminals that need configuration (auto-applied by /settings terminal ): * VS Code integrated terminal * Alacritty * Zed * Apple Terminal Terminals with native support (no configuration needed): * iTerm2 * Kitty * Ghostty * WezTerm * Warp For terminals that don't support automatic configuration, Kiro shows manual workaround instructions. Info A .bak backup is created before any terminal configuration file is modified. If something goes wrong, you can restore from the backup. tmux users: Add both lines to your tmux.conf for Shift+Enter to pass through correctly: bash set -s extended-keys on set -as terminal-features 'xterm*:extkeys' /settings display Toggle visual features for accessibility or personal preference. Use ↑↓ to move between toggles and ←→ or Enter to flip the selected one. bash /settings display Available toggles: * Animations ( chat.allowAnimations ) — when off, spinners and shimmers show static frames instead of animating * ASCII art ( chat.allowAsciiArt ) — when off, replaces braille dots, box-drawing, and Unicode symbols with plain ASCII * Icons ( chat.allowIcons ) — when off, hides status indicator icons (●, ○, ⚠) in favor of text-only labels * Show thinking ( chat.showThinking ) — when off, hides the agent's reasoning blocks from chat output * Status line — choose whether the status line shows the date, time, current usage percentage, and remaining credits. These optional segments are hidden by default. Changes take effect immediately and persist across sessions * Terminal title — when on, sets the terminal window title from a custom name you provide with /title . Enable from /settings display * Preserve scrollback : when on, keeps terminal history available during overflow and resize redraws Animations, ASCII art, icons, and status-line changes take effect immediately. The Show thinking toggle is startup-only — it persists right away, but the change applies to your next chat session. See Thinking display below. Info Setting the environment variable KIRO_ASCII_MODE=1 forces ASCII mode regardless of the ASCII art toggle. /settings history Choose whether prompt history (the Up/Down arrow recall in the input) is tracked per session or shared across all sessions. bash /settings history Options: * session (default) — each chat session keeps its own prompt history, so Up/Down only recalls prompts from the current session * global — all sessions share a single prompt history The change is written to chat.historyMode and takes effect on your next session. Thinking display When the agent reasons through a complex request, it can stream those reasoning ("thinking") blocks inline above its response. This is controlled by the chat.showThinking setting, which is enabled by default in Kiro CLI 2.5.0 and later. Toggle it from the display menu: bash /settings display # Select "Show thinking" and press Enter to toggle Or set it directly from the command line: bash # Hide reasoning blocks kiro-cli settings chat.showThinking false # Show reasoning blocks again kiro-cli settings chat.showThinking true A few things to know: * The setting is startup-only . Changes apply to your next chat session, not the current one. * The live "Thinking..." spinner always appears while the agent is processing, regardless of this setting. * Long reasoning traces collapse to a tail view. Press Ctrl+O to expand or collapse the full thinking block. * Reasoning blocks typically appear for complex, multi-step requests. Simple prompts may not produce any. Persistence All changes made through /settings are saved to ~/.kiro/settings/cli.json and apply to future sessions. You can also edit this file directly with kiro-cli settings open . Model and effort preferences Your /model and /effort selections persist automatically. Switch models or change the reasoning effort level once, and Kiro carries that preference into future sessions — you no longer need to run /model set-current-as-default to make a selection stick. These preferences are written to ~/.kiro/settings/cli.json , the same file used for other CLI settings. Per-model effort defaults live under chat.modelDefaults . See Effort for the full reference. Related * Settings reference — full list of all CLI settings * Terminal UI — terminal UI features and configuration * Configuration — configuration file paths and scopes Page updated: August 27, 2026 Queue steering Prompts