Create and Manage Skills in the Developer Console

The developer console provides a streamlined experience to help you create, manage, and publish skills.

Overall skill development process

The developer console organizes skill building into the following main tasks:

  1. Use Build to set up your skill, configure the interaction model, and specify the endpoints for your service.

    The specific options you complete here depend on the model you add to the skill. For example, for a skill with a custom model, you create intents and sample utterances. For a skill with the pre-built smart home model, you provide the endpoint and account linking configuration.

  2. Use Test to test your skill with either text or voice.
  3. Use Distribution to preview how your skill will appear in the skill store.
  4. Use Certification to validate your skill, run pre-certification tests, and then submit the skill for certification.
  5. Use Analytics to review metrics for your skill such as number utterances, customers, and intents invoked.
1. Build page
1. Build page (for a custom skill)
2. Test page
2. Test page
3. Distribution page
3. Distribution page
4. Certification page
4. Certification page
5. Analytics page
5. Analytics page

See also:

Manage access to the Developer Console

The first user associated with an Alexa developer account is the account owner and has full rights to administer the developer account. As account owner, you can invite additional users to your developer account to give them access to work on your Alexa skills based on their role. For details about roles and adding users to your developer account, see Manage user permissions.

Open the Developer Console

You can open the developer console, then create a new skill or edit an existing skill.

  1. Go to developer.amazon.com/alexa.

  2. Click Your Alexa Consoles, and then click Skills.

    The developer console opens and displays any skills you have already created.

The developer console displays a list of all your skills. You can edit any of these skills directly from this list.

Create a new skill

When you create a new skill, you provide a configuration that lets Alexa do the following:

  • Route requests to the AWS Lambda function or web service that implements the skill. AWS Lambda is a service offering by Amazon Web Services.
  • Display information about the skill in the Amazon Alexa App. The app shows all published skills, as well as all of your own skills currently under development.

To create a new skill, open the console and click Create Skill.

For more about how you create and configure a skill, see Create a Skill and Choose the Interaction Model.

If you are familiar with the previous version of the developer console, see Where Can I Find… to see where you can configuration options in the developer console.

Edit an existing skill

To edit an existing skill:

  1. Open the developer console.
  2. Find the existing skill in the list and click Edit.
  3. Make changes to the skill.
  4. To save your changes, click Save Model and then click Build Model.

If you are familiar with the previous version of the developer console, see Where Can I Find… to see where you can configuration options in the developer console.

For details about using the console, see:

Update your live skill instantly

If you want to update your slot values for a defined slot type or if you want to update your sample utterances in an existing intent, you can update your live skill instantly.

To make live updates to an existing skill

  1. Open the developer console.
  2. Navigate to your skills.
  3. Click Edit next to the development version of skill you want to update.
  4. Update the slot values and utterances.
  5. Build the skill.

Ways to Update Live Skill

The automated certification workflow lets you quickly update your skill’s slot values for existing slot types and sample utterances for existing intents within minutes. The update skill button will be enabled on the developer upon a successful build only if a skill changes are made to slot values and/or sample utterances.

Add or update slot values to an existing slot type

If you have a skill that has constantly changing slot values like list of movie names in a movie booking skill, list of ingredients in a recipe skill, list of answers in a question and answers skill or you simply want to update your slot values, use update live skill to keep your skill’s content fresh and new for your customers.

Alexa Developer Console
Intent page with Update Live Skill option

Add or update sample utterances to existing intent

If you notice missing sample utterances to your skill, use update live skill to add sample utterances to improve the accuracy of skill models within minutes.

Alexa Developer Console
Slot page with Update Live Skill option
Alexa Developer Console
Submission with Update Live Skill option

Where can I find…

If you are familiar with the previous version of the console, use the following guide to find the same features in the developer console.

Skill information page

Setting in the Old Console Equivalent Option in the New Console

Skill type (such as Custom, Smart Home, or Flash Briefing)

Skill types are now called interaction models. You select the model when creating the skill.

Skill language tabs

The sidebar displays a language drop-down list at the top. Select a language to switch to a different language. Select Language settings to configure additional languages.

Name

This is now the Public Name field on the Distribution page.

Invocation Name

Build > Custom > Interaction Model > Invocation

Payload Version (Smart Home)

Build > Smart Home > Payload version

Audio Player, Video App, and Render Template settings.

Build > Custom > Interfaces

Skills Beta Testing

Distribution > Availability. Expand the Beta Test section to see options for starting or managing a beta test.

For more about beta testing, see Skills Beta Testing for Alexa Skills.

Interaction model page

Setting in the Old Console Equivalent Option in the New Console

All the fields for defining the interaction model manually:

  • Intent schema
  • Custom slot types
  • Sample utterances

Sections within Build > Custom > Interaction Model:

  • Intents
  • Slot Types
  • JSON Editor

See Create the Interaction Model for Your Skill.

Access to the skill builder

Sections within Build > Custom > Interaction Model:

  • Intents
  • Slot Types
  • JSON Editor

See Create the Interaction Model for Your Skill.

Link to supported utterances (Smart Home, Flash Briefing, Video)

On the page for selecting the interaction model, click the View example utterances button for the model.

Configuration page

Setting in the Old Console Equivalent Option in the New Console

Endpoint fields:

  • Service Endpoint Type
  • Default
  • Provide geographical region endpoints?
  • For custom skills: Build > Custom > Endpoint
  • For pre-built models:

Custom Error Message (Flash Briefing)

Build > Flash Briefing

Feed Information / Add new feed (Flash Briefing)

Build > Flash Briefing

Account Linking

Build > Account Linking

Permissions

Build > Permissions

Privacy Policy URL

Distribution > Skill Preview > Language > Privacy Policy URL

SSL certificate

This page applies to custom skills configured to use an HTTPS endpoint. These settings are now available on the Endpoint section of the Build page.

Setting in the Old Console Equivalent Option in the New Console

Certificate for <region> Endpoint

Build > Custom > Endpoint. Under the text box for each region endpoint, select the SSL certificate type from the drop-down list.

This list contains three options:

  • My development endpoint has a certificate from a trusted certificate authority
  • My development endpoint is a sub-domain of a domain that has a wildcard certificate from a certificate authority
  • I will upload a self-signed certificate

The self-signed certificate can be used only for testing.

Test page

Setting in the Old Console Equivalent Option in the New Console

Enable switch or Show this skill in the Alexa app switch

Test > Test is enabled for this skill

Go to Test Simulator Beta

The new Test page replaces the previous Test Simulator. The new page has all the same functionality as the Test Simulator.

Voice Simulator

Test > Voice & Tone

Service Simulator

The Test page replaces the old simulator features:

  • Alexa Simulator replaces the Text tab. This now allows testing with either text or voice, and supports several features that were not available in the old service simulator.
  • Manual JSON replaces the JSON tab
  • The Echo Show Display option replaces the Echo Show Render Response (beta). Echo Spot Display is added.

Publishing information page

The Skill Preview option on the Distribution page has a section for each language you have added to the skill. For example, the fields for the US English version are in Launch > Skill Preview > English (US).

Setting in the Old Console Equivalent Option in the New Console

Category

Distribution > Skill Preview > Language > Category

Testing Instructions

Distribution > Privacy & Compliance > Testing Instructions

Countries and Region

Distribution > Availability > Where would you like this skill to be available?

Short Skill Description

Distribution > Skill Preview > Language > One Sentence Description

Full Skill Description

Distribution > Skill Preview > Language > Detailed Description

Example Phrases

Distribution > Skill Preview > Language > Example Phrases

Keywords

Distribution > Skill Preview > Language > Keywords

Images

Privacy and compliance page

Setting in the Old Console Equivalent Option in the New Console

Does this skill allow users to make purchases or spend real money?

Distribution > Privacy & Compliance > Does this skill allow users to make purchases or spend real money?

Does this Alexa skill collect users' personal information?

Distribution > Privacy & Compliance > Does this Alexa skill collect users' personal information?

Is this skill directed to or does it target children under the age of 13?

Distribution > Privacy & Compliance > Is this skill directed to or does it target children under the age of 13?

Export Compliance

Distribution > Privacy & Compliance > Export Compliance

Does this skill contain advertising?

Distribution> Privacy & Compliance > Export Compliance

Privacy Policy URL

Distribution > Skill Preview > Language > Privacy Policy URL

Terms of Use URL

Distribution > Skill Preview > Language > Terms of Use URL

Metrics

You can view metrics for your skills on the Analytics page of the developer console. For more information, see View Skill Metrics.