Test and Debug Your Skill

The Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) includes tools to help you test and debug your skill. The types of testing that you do depends on the voice interaction model for your skill type.

Use the following guides to help you learn how to test and debug an Alexa skill:

Before you publish your skill, you can beta test the skill with a small group of friendly users.

Test for the voice interaction model

The following table shows the most widely used test tools for the pre-built and custom voice interaction models.

Tool Pre-built Custom

Alexa simulator in the Alexa developer console

✔

✔

Alexa simulator in Visual Studio Code

—

✔

ASK Command Line Interface (CLI) test tools

✔

✔

Find utterance conflicts

—

✔

Utterance profiler

—

✔

Natural Language Understanding (NLU) evaluation tool

—

✔

Smart Home debugger

✔

—

Smart Home test tools for automated testing

✔

—

Skill Management REST API for automated testing

✔

✔

Alexa app for Android and iOS

✔

✔

Alexa-enabled device

✔

✔

Test your skill with the Alexa app

You can use the Alexa app installed on your desktop or your iOS or Android mobile device to test your skill .

Make sure that the locale of your Alexa app matches at least one of the locales available for your skill. For example, if your skill has the en-US locale, set your Alexa app to English (United States).

To set the locale for your Alexa app

  1. Sign in to the Alexa app with the same credentials as your developer account.
  2. Navigate to More > Settings > Alexa on This Phone.
  3. Set the language under Language to the locale for your skill.

Complete the following steps to enable your development skill in the Alexa app installed on your iOS or Android mobile device.

To enable your skill in the Alexa app

  1. Sign in to the Alexa app with the same credentials as your developer account.
  2. To find your skill in the Alexa app, tap More, and then tap Skills & Games.
  3. In Skills & Games, tap Your Skills.
  4. Scroll the skill types to the right, and then tap Dev.
  5. Scroll to find your skill.
  6. Tap on your skill name, and then tap ENABLE TO USE.
  7. If your skill uses account linking, follow the prompts to enter your credentials for your cloud account. To allow access to the skill, tap Allow, and then tap CLOSE.

Test your skill on an Alexa-enabled device

To test your skill with an Alexa-enabled device, such as an Amazon Echo, register the device with the same email address that you used to sign up for your developer account on the Amazon developer portal. Make sure that the locale of your device matches at least one of the locales available for your skill. Then, you can invoke your skill with the wake word and your invocation name: "Alexa, open invocation name."

If you configured your device with an account other than your developer account, reset the device, and then re-register it with your developer account. For details, see the help for your specific device:

If you want to add a non-developer account as a user of the device, you can use the Amazon Family feature or start a beta test.

Test your skills behind a firewall

If you develop your Alexa skills in a corporate environment, you must open ports on your corporate firewall to allow developers to connect Amazon Echo devices to the corporate network for testing. In addition, to use Echo devices on your network, you must create a consumer Wi-Fi network within your corporate environment. At this time, Echo devices don't support enterprise networks directly.

Open the following ports on your corporate firewall:

  • Input TCP – 8080, 443, 40317
  • Input UDP – 53, 67, 68, 1900, 50000, 5353, 33434, 49317, 40317
  • Output TCP – *, 80, 8080, 443, 40317, 67, 68
  • Output UDP – *, 53, 123, 40317, 49317, 33434, 1900, 5000, 5353

Additional resources

Use the following additional resources to help you learn how to test an Alexa skill.

Blog posts

Videos

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Last updated: Mar 11, 2025

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