I use Roo code with orchestrator(Boomerang) mode which pretty much has similar workflow. The orchestrator calls the architect to design the specs, and after iterating and agreeing on the approach, it is handed over to Code mode to execute the tasks. Google Gemini 2.5 pro is pretty good at orchestration due to its 1M context and I use claude sonnet 4 for code mode.

What else does Kiro do differently?

Edit: The hooks feature looks nifty. How is the memory management handled? Any codebase indexing etc? Support to add external MCP servers like context7 etc?