Now that you’ve learned the broad strokes of the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK), dive into the details. Explore voice design best practices and learn tips for creating engaging and habitual experiences. Understand the technical differences between the skill types. Browse our collection of Application APIs, tutorials, SDKs, tools, and latest features to help you build.
Custom Skills
Create your own voice experience to deliver nearly any experience, including games, education, health and fitness, productivity, and shopping.
Smart Home Skills
Enable customers to use Alexa to control your cloud-connected lights, plugs, switches, thermostats, cameras, door locks, cooking appliances, and more.
Flash Briefing Skills
Provide customers with easy access to your news headlines, RSS feeds, and other short audio and text content.
Music Skills
Enable customers to stream anything in your music catalog to their Alexa device simply by asking.
Video Skills
Enable customers to use their voices to control your video device and choose which content to watch.
Education Skills
Enable parents and students to request information about school work and assignments directly from Alexa.
Request APIs
Use Request APIs to receive intents and directives from Alexa in your application logic.
Response APIs
Respond to customers using audio and visual elements including text-to-speech, images, and streamed audio and video.
Personalization APIs
Create a more personalized Alexa experience based on the person speaking to Alexa and context.
System Function APIs
Expand your skill’s capabilities using additional Alexa features such as lists, event notifications, and skill connections.
Development Tools
Use tools and APIs to help you create, manage, test, and publish skills.
Build an Engaging Alexa Skill
Start building quickly with our beginner tutorial. You'll get hands-on, step-by-step experience creating your first custom Alexa skill.
How to Design for In-Skill Purchasing
Learn best practices for selling premium content in your skill.
How to Build a Multimodal Skill
Learn how to build visually rich skills using the Alexa Presentation Language (APL).
Alexa Skill Building: video tutorials
Start building quickly with our video tutorials.
From ideation, to brainstorming concepts, to using situational design to map out the voice interaction, building engagement through sounds, through to creating a voice experience using the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK), learn by watching these on-demand videos.
| Skill Type | Custom Skills | Smart Home Skills | Flash Briefing Skills | Music Skills | Video Skills | Education Skills | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Use Case |
Create your own voice experience. | Build voice-forward products for smart home and voice-enable them. | Provide customers with news headlines. | Enable customers to stream your music catalog. | Enable customers to stream your video catalog. | Enable parents and students to request information about school. | |
Interaction Model |
Custom (developer-defined) | Pre-built (Amazon-defined) | Pre-built (Amazon-defined) | Pre-built (Amazon-defined) | Pre-built (Amazon-defined) | Pre-built (Amazon-defined) | |
Application Logic APIS |
Request | Custom (based on interaction model) | Smart Home Skill API | Flash Briefing Skill API | Music Skill API | Video Skill API | Education Skill API |
| Response | Text to speech, pre-recorded audio, multimodal display | Device control | RSS feed readout | Music stream | Video stream | Student information | |
| Account Linking | ✓ | ✓ | ✖ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Personalization | ✓ | ✖ | ✖ | ✖ | ✖ | ✖ | |
| System Function | ✓ | ✖ | ✖ | ✖ | ✖ | ✖ | |
| Transaction | ✓ | ✖ | ✖ | ✖ | ✖ | ✖ | |
| SDKs | Python, Node.js, Java | ✖ | ✖ | ✖ | ✖ | ✖ | |
Development Tools |
Skill Management | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Skill Testing | ✓ | ✓ |
✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Interaction Model Testing | ✓ | ✖ | ✖ | ✖ | ✖ | ✖ | |
| Analytics | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
