Build a repeatable PHP-to-Java migration workflow with Kiro
The report presents a Kiro-based migration engine built from versioned skill files, a mechanical PHP model-discovery scanner, an eight-phase workflow, and explicit approval gates. The original PHP application serves as the specification, while a parity harness compares request and response behavior to determine whether the Java port is correct. The same skill files can also be used with AWS Transform for larger-scale migration and modernization runs.
The approach gives teams a repeatable structure for agent-assisted migration, with mechanical discovery before translation, human review at approval gates, and behavioral verification before a Java port is accepted.
When your team moves a mature PHP application to Java, you gain stronger type safety, broader library support, and more predictable scaling. A PHP codebase built over the years with Laravel, Symfony, or Doctrine carries business rules in places that are not obvious, from Eloquent traits to XML mapping files, so a structurally similar Java port can compile cleanly and still behave differently.
This post shows how to turn PHP-to-Java migration from a one-time leap of faith into a measurable, repeatable process using Kiro. Kiro is an AI integrated development environment (IDE) that pairs an AI agent with your codebase to run multi-step engineering tasks with you in the loop. The approach centers on a reusable engine: a shared methodology, a mechanical discovery scanner, and an eight-phase workflow. This engine treats the original PHP application as the specification and refuses to declare the Java port correct until a parity harness verifies it.
Prerequisites
Before getting started, you need:
- Familiarity with PHP (Laravel/Eloquent or Symfony/Doctrine). Java knowledge (Spring Boot, JPA) helps you review the generated output, but the engine produces idiomatic Java for you, so you don’t need to rewrite the application in Java yourself.
- A Kiro workspace with access to Skills and Steering files.
- PHP 8.0 or newer on the machine running the discovery scanner, and Java 21 with Maven for the generated Spring Boot projects.
- A basic understanding of migration planning (discovery, translation, and validation).