Alexa Skills Kit > Get Deeper > Custom Skills
When you build a custom skill, you define your own interaction model, or voice use interface, rather than relying on one provided by Alexa. Your custom interaction model specifies how customers' spoken input maps to the requests, or intents, that your skill can handle. When a customer speaks to your skill, Alexa uses your interaction model to determine the underlying customer intent, and sends it to your skill application logic.
Intents
Intents represent the customer requests that your skill can handle. You define the intents for the unique functions that your skill provides, and can also take advantage of built-in intents for common actions such as stopping, canceling, and asking for help.
Slots
Intents can optionally have arguments, or variables, called slots. You provide a name and a slot type for each slot in your interaction model. The slot type contains a list of representative values for the slot in order to improve recognition accuracy. You can use a built-in slot type for commonly used arguments such as dates and numbers, or define your own.
Sample Utterances
Sample utterances are spoken phrases that customers will use with your skill. When you design your interaction model, you specify the phrases customers will use throughout your skill experience and how Alexa should map these to your skill intents.
Dialog Management
Alexa can take on the back-and-forth of a dialog, gathering information and letting your customer interact conversationally. You write less code and they have a more natural-feeling experience.
ASK SDKs
Use the Alexa Skills Kit SDKs for Node.js, Python, and Java to reduce complexity in how you receive and respond to requests from Alexa.
View a full list of skill categories in the Alexa Skills Store.
Game Skills
Pioneers of voice games are imagining a whole new way to engage players, feeding their curiosity with new ways to play—including interactive adventures, family-friendly games, and quiz games.
Healthcare Skills
The Alexa Skills Kit now enables select Covered Entities and their Business Associates, subject to the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), to build Alexa skills that transmit and receive protected health information as part of an invite-only program.
| Date | Name | Summary | Locale Availability | Links | Release Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3/1/2021 | Alexa Conversations (GA) |
Create Alexa skills that feel more natural with fewer lines of code (General Availability) |
US | GA | |
7/22/2020 |
Alexa Conversations (beta) |
Create Alexa skills that feel more natural with fewer lines of code (beta) |
US |
|
Beta |
7/22/2020 |
Quick Links for Alexa |
Customers can launch your skills by clicking a link from your mobile app, website, or online ads |
US, es-US |
Beta |
|
7/22/2020 |
Alexa for Apps |
You can now enable customers to quickly get to key content and functionality in your app, just by asking Alexa. |
All |
Preview |
|
7/22/2020 |
Customer Behavior Analytics |
You can now understand how customers behave in your skill with Customer Behavior analytics |
US |
Beta |
|
7/22/2020 |
Multi-Value Slots (MVS) |
Receive multiple slot values and respond to more complex utterances |
All English language locales |
Beta |
