The Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) is a collection of self-service APIs and tools that make it fast and easy for you to add skills to Alexa. Alexa is the cloud-based voice service that powers Amazon Echo, a new category of device designed around your voice. We announced the availability of the Alexa Skills Kit at the end of June, and thousands of developers have started building skills to expand Alexa’s capabilities.
Since June, we’ve continued to roll out new features and documentation to help you build more easily. Most recently, we launched a submission checklist to clarify our certification process and help you get your skill certified more quickly. This is the most recent in new Alexa Skills Kit releases for developers. In September, we launched account linking, service simulator, custom slot types and SSML support.
In August, we announced a preview of the first third-party skills to give customers an indication of how Alexa will expand with third-party capabilities. Since then, we’ve continued to announce new skills, including Bitcoin Rate and Event Guide. We encourage you to check them out on your Amazon Echo. To use any of these new skills, you will need to enable them in the Alexa smartphone app. Simply open the app and tap on "Skills" in the menu, and then press "Enable" for the skill you want to use.
If this is your first time using the Alexa Skills Kit, we recommend you review the following materials in this order:
You may also want to check out these additional Alexa developer resources:
Order Echo - Amazon.com Page
Alexa Skills Kit (ASK)
Alexa Voice Service (AVS)
Alexa Fund
Alexa Developer Forums
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