I Built Yahoo Pipes 2.0 in 7 Days Using Kiro's Spec-Driven AI Development

Source: Dev.to

The Yahoo Pipes Problem

If you’re a certain age in tech, you remember Yahoo Pipes fondly. It offered:

• Visual programming for data workflows
• No coding required
• Fetch RSS feeds, filter, merge, transform
• Output to anything

Yahoo shut it down in 2015. The dev community mourned. Alternatives (Zapier, IFTTT, n8n) existed but none captured that perfect balance of power and simplicity.

What I Built: GhostPipes

Core Features

🎯 ML‑Powered Recommendations

“The Netflix for pipelines.” Paste a URL, upload CSV, or drop text—Ghost Pipes analyzes:

• Input type (file/URL/text)
• MIME type and structure
• Your usage history
• Pipeline success rates

It scores each pipeline 0‑100 and suggests the top 5, learning from every execution.

🎨 Industrial‑Grade Visual Editor

Not a simple node editor; realistic pipes:

Bad:  Node1 -----> Node2
Good: Node1 ═══╗
              ║
          Node2

Features:

• 10 px thick SVG pipes
• 90° bends with smooth cubic‑bezier corners
• Collision avoidance (pipes route around nodes)
• Decorative joint patches at elbows
• 60 fps drag‑and‑drop with requestAnimationFrame

⚡ 35+ Node Types

Input, processing, and output nodes covering:

• HTTP requests (scheduled or one‑time)
• Webhooks (generate unique URLs)
• File operations (CSV, JSON, HTML parsing)
• AI processing (summarize, translate, extract)
• Logic (loops, conditionals, switches)
• Destinations (download, API POST, email)

🔗 Real‑Time Webhooks

Generate a unique URL for each pipeline. When external services trigger it:

1. Backend validates token
2. Checks payload size
3. Executes the pipeline

Implementation details (excerpt):

If  kiro build backend
- [Kiro reads specs + steering]
- [Generates 15 files, 3,500 lines]
- [Tests pass on first run]

• Time: 5 days of implementation
• Quality: Production‑ready immediately
• Maintainability: Fully documented, follows my style

Real Examples of Kiro’s Magic

Example 1: The SVG Pipe Challenge

Problem: “I don’t know SVG. Creating realistic pipes will take weeks.”

Solution:

• Described “industrial pipes, 10 px thick, 90° bends, smooth corners”
• Uploaded a reference image

Kiro generated a complete PathCalculator class:

export class PathCalculator {
  calculateOrthogonalPath(start, end, obstacles) {
    // 120 lines of collision detection, waypoint generation,
    // Bezier curve insertion
  }

  generateSVGPath(waypoints) {
    // Converts to SVG with smooth corners
  }
}

Result: Worked perfectly; 200+ lines I never had to write.

Example 2: 35+ Om.js Web Components

Problem: AI trained on React produces garbage for custom frameworks.

Solution: Documented Om.js in /steering/om-js-framework.md (reactive proxy system, html template literals, event binding with @click, no shadow DOM).

Kiro’s Output (FilterNode component):

import { react, html } from '/lib/om.compact.js';

export class FilterNode extends HTMLElement {
  state = react({
    mode: 'permit',
    rules: []
  });

  render() {
    return html`
      
         this.state.mode}>
          Permit
          Block
        
        ${this.state.rules.map(rule => this.renderRule(rule))}
      
    `;
  }
}

Perfect Om.js syntax on the first try. Generated 34 more nodes, all flawless.

Example 3: AWS Integration via MCP

Background: Front‑end dev, out of practice with AWS.

Issue: Aurora PostgreSQL migrations failed; database seemed missing.

Kiro + AWS MCP:

Me: "Here’s my Terraform config. Migrations fail. Database 'ghostpipes' doesn't exist."
Kiro: "RDS instance created, but database not initialized. Run:
CREATE DATABASE ghostpipes;

Also, your connection string is missing the DB name. Add: ?database=ghostpipes"

Fixed in 5 minutes.

The Agent Hooks Secret Weapon

Kiro’s hooks continuously monitor code quality.

.kiro/hooks/pre-commit.js

// Check for leaked API keys
if (detectAPIKeys(changedFiles)) {
  fail("API key detected in commit!");
}

// Check manifest.json permissions
if (hasNewPermissions(manifest)) {
  warn("New permission added: " + newPerms);
}

.kiro/hooks/on-build.js

// Remove console.logs in production
stripDebugCode(distFiles);

// Check bundle size
if (extensionSize > 5 * 1024 * 1024) { // 5 MB
  fail("Extension too large: " + extensionSize);
}

These hooks caught 12 issues during development:

• 2 hard‑coded test API keys
• 1 accidental “ permission
• 8 leftover console.logs
• 1 bundle‑size spike (wrong library included)

The Numbers

What I Learned

1. Specs Are Worth It

Spending 2 days on specs felt slow, but the clean code Kiro generated saved 2 weeks of refactoring.

• Bad approach: Code first, document later (if ever)
• Good approach: Spec first, code second

2. Steering Docs = 1 % Effort, 99 % Payoff

Defining style and framework preferences once lets Kiro produce code that matches your ecosystem out of the box.