Editor’s Note – The new Alexa Skills Kit developer console is now generally available. Learn more 

Today we are excited to announce the new Alexa Skills Kit developer console (beta), which provides a streamlined experience to help you create, manage, and publish Alexa skills. The new developer console makes navigation easier with an updated user interface and incorporates improvements based on the Skill Builder and Test Simulator (beta) as the default experiences for building custom interaction models and testing skills, respectively. You can take advantage of the beta now to edit an existing skill or to create a new one.

Key Features of the New Developer Console

Based on your feedback we have improved the site structure and information architecture. The developer console beta organizes skill tasks into build, test, launch, and measure phases, each of which is easily accessible from the top navigation as shown below. You use the left navigation to choose specific steps within each phase and to configure account linking and permissions for your skill.

Some other improvements you will notice include:

• The Build page provides a visual interface for creating intents, slots, sample utterances, and the dialog model. These components are the next iteration of the skill builder.

• The Test page allows you to interact with your skill using voice or text, and to test single utterances, multi-turn dialogs, and device renderings. These capabilities are a native part of the new console. The Test Your Skill page provides more details.

• Use the Launch page to preview how your skill will appear in the skill store and prepare it for submission. When you are ready to submit, the page displays common validation errors and guides you on what actions to take to resolve the errors before you submit. It also allows you to create and publish private skills for use with Alexa for Business. Previously, publishing private skills required the use of the Alexa Skills Kit Command Line Interface (CLI).
• You can now navigate to the Measure page directly from the developer console. In addition to statistics on sessions, unique customers, and utterances, it includes new cohort analysis that you can use to visualize customer retention and engagement metrics of your skills over time.

Learn more about the new console in our technical documentation, or watch the overview video below.

Try the New Console Today

You can now use the redesigned console to create a new skill or to edit most existing skills. There are some features not yet supported in the developer console (beta), so be sure to check for unsupported features before you use the beta on an existing skill. We encourage you to send us your thoughts on the new console by using the Feedback forum link and choosing the “Alexa Developer Console” category. Tell us what you think!