Device Makers > Alexa Connected Devices > Development Resources > Alexa Smart Home Skills
The Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) provides self-service APIs and tools that you can use to build smart home skills that enable customers to control your cloud-connected devices and appliances using Alexa. You can use our device interfaces like building blocks, putting them together in interesting ways to support almost any smart device.
Use the Smart Home Skill API to enable Alexa voice control of your cloud-connected devices via a Skill. With the Smart Home Skill API, the voice interaction model is defined and handled for you, giving you built-in support for many different kinds of devices.
Custom Skill API
With the Custom Skill API, you can build your own voice interaction models from scratch to support additional features beyond those provided in the Smart Home Skill API.
Multi-Capability Skills
With Multi-Capability Skills, you can combine the Smart Home and Custom Skill models into a single skill to support nearly any feature.
Building Block APIs
Use these capability interfaces to describe your device’s Alexa functionality, such as the ability to dim a light or turn it on and off. You can combine multiple capabilities as building blocks together to model the full feature set of your devices.
Automatic Reordering
Make shopping disappear by automating the reordering of batteries, coffee, filters, and more using Amazon Dash Replenishment.
Proactive State Updates
Send proactive state updates to Alexa when your device makes a change to let customers know when a request was completed, such as updating a door’s status as locked in the Alexa app.
Discovery Messages for Customer Queries
Enable customers to check the current state of a device using Alexa or the Alexa app.
Leverage tools and analytics to test your smart home skill and manage its performance.
Automate Testing
Use the Smart Home Tests tool to reduce the time and cost to certify your device by quickly testing your smart home skill’s functionality.
Debug Device Events
Use the Live Debugger Tool tool to test the events that Alexa receives from your skill, including your JSON, and any processing errors.
Test Device States
View the current values of all properties of Smart Home devices that are associated with your skill and your developer account.
Validate Skill Responses
Use the validation schemas to test and validate your smart home skill's Lambda responses.
Manage Operational Metrics
Track and manage your device’s operational metrics like latency and success rates in the ASK console.
Explore these resources to learn more about building smart home skills for Alexa.
Tutorial: Build a Smart Home Skill
Learn how to build a Smart Home Skill in the developer console, create an AWS Lambda function to handle the skill's logic, and test your skill.
Smart Home Skill Device Templates
Get started with our device templates that recommend interfaces you can implement based on your device type.
5 Steps Before You Start
Learn the five prerequisites to building a smart home skill, from account linking to creating an AWS lambda function.
