What is Agent Focus, and how can you accelerate development

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Original language: English

Original video: What is Agent Focus, and how can you accelerate development · Channel: Kiro · 03:38 · Watch on YouTube

Topics: AI agents, Task and workflow automation, Software engineering with AI, AI developer tools

Summary

Agent Focus mode lets developers manage multiple projects and agents through one chat interface instead of juggling separate IDEs or CLIs. The video demonstrates opening projects, starting agents, and creating separate work trees so concurrent work in the same codebase does not interfere. It also covers agent confirmation notifications, cloud sessions, and opening an existing chat in the Kiro CLI. The presenter encourages viewers to try the feature and says more features are being added.

Key points

Agent Focus brings multiple projects and agents into one interface.
Open Agent Focus from the top-right corner of the CLI.
Add projects using the ellipsis menu and the Open project option.
Start an agent with the plus arrow or resume an existing chat from the drop-down.
Create a separate work tree to keep agents working in the same codebase from interfering with each other.
Ask an agent to make changes, then create a pull request and merge the work into main if desired.
The bell icon shows when agents are stopped and waiting for confirmation.
Cloud sessions run tasks in a sandbox connected to a GitHub or GitLab repository.
Open an existing chat in the Kiro CLI to continue the session there.

Chapters

Start	Chapter	Summary
00:00	Introducing Agent Focus	The presenter introduces Agent Focus as a way to work with multiple projects and agents through a single chat interface.
00:31	Opening projects and starting agents	The video shows how to open Agent Focus, add local projects, and start an agent or return to an existing chat.
01:34	Using separate work trees	The presenter creates a work tree to isolate an agent’s changes, then asks the agent to add observability and describes merging the work through a pull request.
02:36	Notifications and cloud sessions	The video covers agent confirmation notifications, chat syncing, and running work in a cloud sandbox connected to a repository.
03:08	Resuming a chat in the CLI	The presenter demonstrates opening an existing chat session in the Kiro CLI and invites viewers to try Agent Focus.

Quotes

With agent focus mode, I can have one chat interface in the middle, have all my projects open — 00:00

You can then start an agent on any one of these by clicking the plus arrow. — 01:03

That way, they don’t interfere with each other. — 01:34

So if I have multiple things happening at once, I always can double-check to see what’s happening. — 02:36

It’ll open up in that folder and it’ll resume that session. — 03:08

Concepts and entities

Agent Focus, Kiro, Kiro CLI, worktree, cloud sessions, GitHub, GitLab

Full transcript (original language)

00:00 One workflow that I find really useful is to open up multiple projects and then have multiple agents working on each one of those projects at the same time. Now, you can do this by opening up multiple IDEs or multiple CLIs, but there’s actually a better way and I want to introduce you to agent focus mode. With agent focus mode, I can have one chat interface in the middle, have all my projects open, and then have agents running at multiple times on different projects, and even miss different work

00:31 trees if needed. Let me show you a quick example of how this works. This is the new agent focus. In here, you can see all the local projects that I have open on the left-hand side, and I can work with them at the same time. To open this mode up, you need to go into the CLI, and in the top right-hand corner, you need to click agent focus, and that will go ahead and open it up here. Let me show you some nice features. If you want to open up more multiple projects, you can click this little ellipsis here, this vertical ellipsis. Click open project, and then choose the

01:03 directory, and then click open, and then it’ll appear on the left-hand side. You can then start an agent on any one of these by clicking the plus arrow. This will open a new window, or you can go to any existing chats that you had in the past, and they’ll appear here in this drop-down. One really nice feature I like is often I have multiple agents running in the same code base, and in that case, I want to open up a work tree. That way, they don’t interfere with each other. So, I can click the ellipsis, go new work

01:34 tree, I’m going to choose Stripe durable functions, click okay. I’m going to call it feature my back end feature one. It’s going to choose a branch and then a new directory. So, I’ll call this, I don’t know, 1 2 3. And then from here, it’ll create a new folder for me, and it’ll have this new work tree that is separate from my other code base. So that way they if I have an agent running, it doesn’t affect the original code there. And I can have multiple running at the same time.

02:06 Then from here, I can ask a question like, please add observability to this code base. And then it’ll continue to work and add that in there. And then when I’m ready, I can create a pull request and then merge it all back into main if I like. Another nice feature is there’s this little window right here, this little bell icon. So anytime I have an agent stopped and it’s asking me for confirmation for something, it’ll

02:36 show up here in this window. It’ll also show up in the main one. So if I have multiple things happening at once, I always can double-check to see what’s happening. I click allow here. And by the way, this also syncs up with the chat if you have it open in the ID IDE as well. I also have cloud sessions. So if you haven’t tried this, it’s a really cool feature where you can run run things in the cloud in a sandbox connected to your GitHub or GitLab repository. So you can see here now it’s working adding this observability. Uh one last thing, too, is I really like

03:08 this open project with Ciro CLI. So what I often like to do is if I’m in a existing chat session or even a new chat session, I can open it up in the CLI. So I created this chat earlier about my architecture. And I really like the CLI interface. I can click here, open in with Ciro CLI. It’ll open up a new window on another screen here. And then it’ll open up in that folder and it’ll resume that session. And then I can start working directly inside Ciro CLI and have all those really nice

03:38 features that it has. So I want you guys to try this out. [music] Leave a comment below and let me know how you like it. Uh we’re continuously adding more features to it. I think it’s a a a fun way and a really great way [music] to be more productive inside your app while you’re using Kira. Thanks. >> [music]