In April 2016, developer Aaron Roberts put the finishing touches on Alarm.com’s custom Alexa Skill. That wrapped up almost three months of development and internal and beta testing. All that testing led to a smooth certification process.

Rebecca Davenport, Director of Product Management at Alarm.com, says the Alarm.com skill controls more than just home security. It also controls almost every other device that’s part of the company’s home automation ecosystem. That includes security equipment, door locks, garage doors, video cameras, lights and thermostats.

The company's founders recognized the limitations of traditional landline-based alarm systems. Besides relying on phone wires—which can be tampered with and unreliable —customers often forgot to arm their systems. The company saw a unique opportunity to allow customers to arm and disarm the system and know what’s happening at their home from anywhere.

Alarm.com enhanced its offering with its first mobile app. At the same time, it started expanding its core platform beyond security into home automation and video. Today over two million Alarm.com customers control their smart home devices from their phones, tablets, TV, and more.

Voice control: The next evolution in Alarm.com’s smart home ecosystem

When Amazon Echo and Alexa debuted, Alarm.com saw another huge opportunity. With the launch of the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK), the company knew voice technology’s time had come. “We had voice technology on our radar,” Davenport says. “Voice control is a compelling way for customers to interact with their devices from within their homes.”

The software team didn’t start developing a custom Alexa skill right away. Instead, Roberts started his own early exploration and prototype during the ASK beta. When the integration project got the green light, he was ready.

Roberts said using the ASK API was straightforward. He found mapping the API responses to Alarm.com’s existing web services was the simplest part of the project. As for the rest, he recalls the major components:

Refining the Voice User Interface (VUI)

The team members brainstormed all the ways they thought users would request a command. Like many developers new to voice applications, they found customers don’t always say what you expect.

We are excited to share a new template for developers, GameHelper. This template helps you build game guides or user guides for your favorite game. In this tutorial, we will build a skill that tells you how to play chess. There will be five main interaction points that will provide information about how to play the game. The skill in this example will also have the ability to provide a user with a random tip to help improve a user’s game. For this game we also thought it would be interesting to allow the user to ask Alexa about a certain chess piece and get some information about it.

This skill can be adapted to accommodate your favorite game, by changing some basic text. It is also possible to add extra functionality to show features of your favorite game.

After completing this tutorial, you'll know how to do the following:

• Create a decision-based skill - This tutorial will walk first-time Alexa skills developers through all the required steps involved in creating a decision-based skill using a template called ‘GameHelper’.
• Understand the basics of VUI design - Creating this skill will help you understand the basics of creating a working Voice User Interface (VUI) while using a cut/paste approach to development. You will learn by doing, and end up with a published Alexa skill. This tutorial includes instructions on how to customize the skill and submit for certification. For guidance on designing a voice experience with Alexa you can also watch this video.
• Use JavaScript/Node.js and the Alexa Skills Kit to create a skill - You will use the template as a guide but the customization is up to you. For more background information on using the Alexa Skills Kit please watch this video.
• Get your skill published - Once you have completed your skill, this tutorial will guide you through testing your skill and sending your skill through the certification process for making it available to be enabled by any Alexa user.

Today’s post comes from J. Michael Palermo IV, Sr. Evangelist at Amazon Alexa. In this post you’ll learn what directives are and how to develop a smart home skill adapter from scratch using Node.js.

Much of the heavy lifting for creating smart home skills happens before writing a line of code. In my last post, I walked you through the five  prerequisites to building a smart home skill. You may have noticed I left the code for the AWS Lambda function blank. In this post, you will start where that post ended. Not only will see how to manage the code workflow for a smart home skill adapter using Node.js, but you will also learn the fundamentals of the directive language, the communication protocol used between your skill adapter and the Smart Home Skill API.

Skill Adapter Directive Language

Before tackling any lines of code, you should understand the role of your skill adapter in the smart home skill process workflow. When the Alexa service understands the intent of a voice command to be smart home related, it continues processing through the Smart Home Skill API. The Smart Home Skill API service then communicates with a skill adapter using directive language, a JSON protocol structured to convey requests and responses. Each unique instance of a request or a response is known as a directive. All communications between your skill adapter and the Smart Home Skill API use the directive language. Your skill adapter receives requests as directives and is responsible for providing responses as directives.
 

Figure 1 : Directive Language

The structure of a directive involves two primary components, a header and a payload. While the payload varies in structure based on context, the header is fixed with just four fields defined here.

Table 1 : Directive header fields

Consider an example of an incoming directive from the Smart Home Skill API service to a skill adapter.

{

 "header" : {

  "messageId" : "6d6d6e14-8aee-473e-8c24-0d31ff9c17a2",

  "name" : "DiscoverAppliancesRequest",

  "namespace" : "Alexa.ConnectedHome.Discovery",

  "payloadVersion" : "2"

 },

 "payload" : {

  "accessToken" : "acc355t0ken"

 }

}

In the header, the namespace reveals the category of the directive is “Alexa.ConnectedHome.Discovery”, and the name “DiscoverAppliancesRequest” indicates a device discovery request is being made to a skill adapter. Because all smart home skill adapters require account linking at time of enablement, the payload will include the access token associated with the customer’s device cloud account. The value shown above is a mocked value used for testing purposes only. For more background about account linking and access tokens, please see this blog post.

Before today, the Alexa Skills Kit enabled short audio via SSML audio tags on your skill responses. Today we are excited to announce that we have now added streaming audio support for Alexa skills including playback controls. This means you can easily create skills that playback audio content like podcasts, news stories, and live streams.

New AudioPlayer and PlaybackController interfaces provide directives and requests for streaming audio and monitoring playback progression. With this new feature, your skill can send audio directives to start and stop the playback. The Alexa service can provide your skill with information about the audio playback’s state, such as when the track is nearly finished, or when playback starts and stops. Alexa can also now send requests in response to hardware buttons, such as those on a remote control.

Enabling Audio Playback Support in Your Skill

To enable audio playback support in your skill you simply need to turn the Audio Player functionality on and handle the new audio Intents. Navigate to the Alexa developer portal and do the following:

• On the Skill Information page in the developer portal, set the Audio Player option to Yes.
   
• Include the required built-in intents for pausing and resuming audio in your intent schema and implement them in some way:
  • AMAZON.PauseIntent
  • AMAZON.ResumeIntent
     
• Call the AudioPlayer.Play Directive from one of your Intents to start the Audio Playback
   
• Handle AudioPlayer and PlaybackController Requests and optionally respond

In addition to the required built-in intents, your skill should gracefully handle the following additional built-in intents:
 

• AMAZON.CancelIntent
• AMAZON.LoopOffIntent
• AMAZON.LoopOnIntent
• AMAZON.NextIntent
• AMAZON.PreviousIntent
• AMAZON.RepeatIntent
• AMAZON.ShuffleOffIntent
• AMAZON.ShuffleOnIntent
• AMAZON.StartOverIntent

Note: Users can invoke these built-in intents without using your skill’s invocation name. For example, while in a podcast skill you create, a user could say “Alexa Next” and your skill would play the next episode.

If your skill is currently playing audio, or was the skill most recently playing audio, these intents are automatically sent to your skill. Your code needs to expect them and not return an error. If any of these intents does not apply to your skill, handle it in an appropriate  way in your code. For instance, you could return a response with text-to-speech indicating that the command is not relevant to the skill. The specific message depends on the skill and whether the intent is one that might make sense at some point, for example:
 

• For a podcast skill, the AMAZON.ShuffleOnIntent intent might return the message: “I can’t shuffle a podcast.”
• For version 1.0 of a music skill that doesn’t yet support playlists and shuffling, the AMAZON.ShuffleOnIntent intent might return: “Sorry, I can’t shuffle music yet.”

Note: If your skill uses the AudioPlayer directives, you cannot extend the above built-in intents with your own sample utterances.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be participating in a variety of events and we’d love to meet you. Get hands-on learning and learn to build an Alexa skill at a hackathon, attend a presentation at smart home events, join in the conversation at select conferences, or connect with fellow developers at a local meetup.

Hackathons

Led by Alexa Solutions Architects and Developer Evangelists, hackathons are a great way to get the hands-on experience of building and testing an Alexa skill. 

Galvanize Skill Building Workshop | August 25, 6:30-8:30 p.m. PT
Seattle, WA

The Galvanize workshop is intended for software and hardware developers interested in voice control, home automation, and personal assistant technology. We will walk through the development of a new Alexa skill and incorporate it into a consumer-facing device.

/hack San Francisco | August 27, 10:00 a.m. PT – August 28, 5:30 p.m. PT
San Francisco, California

/hack (slash hack) is the premiere hackathon by hackers, for hackers. Three hundred hackers will compete in the 24-hour hackathon held in San Francisco. Hackers at all levels – working professional, college student, or even high school student – can learn from students, CTOs, architects, and more.

Amazon Alexa Virtual Hackathon Decision Tree | August 31, 11:00 a.m. PT – 12:00 p.m. PT
Virtual Webinar

In this hour-long webinar we will build an Alexa skill using the Decision Tree skill template. The template makes it easy for developers and non-developers to create skills that ask you a series of questions and then give you an answer. This is a great starter for simple adventure games and magazine style quizzes like ‘what kind of job is good for me?’ We will use AWS Lambda and the Alexa Skills Kit, and provide built-in business logic, use cases, error handling, and help functions for your new skill. Simply come up with the idea before we begin and we will help you build it.

TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco Hackathon | September 10, 12:30 p.m. PT – September 11, 2:00 p.m. PT
San Francisco, California

Preceding the Disrupt Conference is Hackathon weekend, where developers and engineers descend from all over the world to take part in a 24-hour hacking endurance test. Teams join forces to build a new product and present it on the Disrupt stage to a panel of expert judges and an audience of tens of thousands.

Code District LA Bootcamp | September 13, 6:00 p.m. PT
Torrance, California

This free workshop is intended for anyone interested in learning how to program voice-controlled devices. Join Solutions Architect Liz Myers to learn about Alexa skills development.

Today’s post comes from J. Michael Palermo IV, Sr. Evangelist at Amazon Alexa. Learn what steps you should take before developing with the Smart Home Skill API.

Before creating a skill, you must first determine if you want to build a custom skill or a smart home skill. Most skills are built using the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) and are broadly known as custom skills. However, if the end goal is to enable a skill to have voice control over a device or appliance in the home, you will want to develop a smart home skill using the Smart Home Skill API.

Smart home skills differ from custom skills in these ways:

• With custom skills, you must build a voice interaction model to handle customer requests. Smart home skills use Amazon’s standardized language model so you don’t have to build the voice interaction model. As such, your customers don’t need to remember your skill name or a specific invocation phrase. Furthermore, customers who already control devices using Alexa with other smart home skills already know how to use your smart home skill, and will also enjoy a consistent, first class experience with your devices.
• The smart home skill adapter must be hosted in an AWS Lambda function, whereas custom skills can be hosted in either AWS Lambda or another cloud-based hosting service.
• You must implement account linking using OAuth 2.0 for smart home skills, while this is optional for custom skills.
• Since smart home skills target connected devices in the home, you must have access to a cloud-based API to handle device discovery and control.

With the above differences in mind, your approach to creating a smart home skill may require more work to be done upfront than with a custom skill. However, know that with a smart home API skill, you wouldn’t need to define and maintain a language model yourself, and as Alexa improves its language model overall, you get the improvements for free.

Meeting the Smart Home Skill API Prerequisites, Step by Step

Follow these steps to confirm you have what you need before developing a smart home skill. Start by following these five steps to meet the Smart Home Skill API prerequisites:
 

1. Choose OAuth 2.0 provider for account linking
2. Initialize creation of smart home skill
3. Create an AWS Lambda Function
4. Configure smart home skill
5. Finalize account linking and confirm
    

Step 1: Choose OAuth 2.0 Provider for Account Linking

Sebastien Stormacq recently authored an excellent blog post providing step-by-step guidance to implement account linking for custom skills. While much of the information in that post applies here too, there are some differences in implementation details. This post will provide complete guidance for setting up account linking for smart home skills, with some admitted overlap to Sebastien’s post. For a fine overview of OAuth 2.0 and understanding of options, it may benefit you to read the first two sections of his post and then resume here.

If you have already created or chosen a specific OAuth 2.0 provider, you can proceed to the next step. If not, the remainder of this step will show how to fulfill this requirement by using Login with Amazon (LWA).

First, you need to create an LWA security profile. Here’s how:
 

• Connect to https://developer.amazon.com and authenticate with your Amazon credentials.
• Click on “Apps & Services”, then “Login with Amazon”
• Click on “Create a New Security Profile”

Figure 1 : Access Login With Amazon.

Fill in all three required fields to create your security profile and click “Save”. For the purpose of this post, the privacy URL points to Amazon’s. Make sure to replace the link with a link to your own Data Privacy policy.

We are excited to launch a recognition program that honors the most engaged developers and contributors in the community. These individuals are educating and inspiring other developers in the community online and offline. They are actively and independently sharing their passion and knowledge of Alexa with the community. We’re proud to call them our “Alexa Champions”.

Today we recognize the initial group of ten Alexa Champions and showcase their contributions to the Alexa community in a dedicated gallery. We thank them for all the knowledge they have shared with others and for the tools they have created to make it easier for developers to use the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) and Alexa Voice Service (AVS).

Meet the Alexa Champions

Join me in welcoming the Alexa Champions:

• April Hamilton was one of the first developers to join the private beta of the Alexa Skills Kit and to get skills certified in 2015. She curates the LoveMyEcho.com blog daily and shares tips and tricks with developers in her weekly ASK Dev Tuesday series. Learn more about April.
• Brian Donohue started a local meetup group for Alexa enthusiasts and developers in New York which now counts over 400 members. For the first event, he created a “Hello world” template to show attendees how to build their first Alexa skill. Learn more about Brian.
• Eric Olson a.k.a. Galactoise is one of the most active contributors in the Alexa forums with over 280 reputation points. He co-created the Alexa Skills Kit Responder that lets you mock skill responses to your Echo and gives you the ability to rapidly validate your content. Learn more about Eric.
• John Wheeler is the creator of Flask-Ask, an Alexa Skills Kit Framework for Python that enables rapid skill development. He also created AlexaTutorial.com, a resource for leveling-up quickly with Flask-Ask and the Alexa Skills Kit. Learn more about John.
• Mark Carpenter has been publishing the ASK Dev Weekly newsletter since September 2015. He was the architect of the Alexa Project curriculum that is offered to Bloc bootcamp students. He publishes the Alexa Skill of the Day apps which surface one exemplary Alexa skill each day. Learn more about Mark.
• Matt Kruse created the alexa-app framework and the alexa-app-server container for hosting javascript-based skills. He also published open-source code on GitHub for integration with IFTTT and a “find my iPhone” skill using the find-my-iphone module. Learn more about Matt.
• Rick Wargo released the alexa-skill-template, a Node.js development environment for Alexa skills authored in JavaScript and hosted locally for testing and in AWS Lambda for production with support for DynamoDB. He’s s an active participant in other open source Alexa projects. Learn more about Rick.
• Sam Machin got started with Alexa at the BattleHack world finals in November 2015. He published several tutorials on GitHub to help teach others how to turn a RaspberryPi or a CHIP into an Alexa client with the Alexa Voice Service. His alexaweb project was the inspiration for Echosim.io. Learn more about Sam.
• Steven Arkonovich was an Alexa enthusiast from the very beginning, writing Alexa skills before there even was ASK. He developed a Ruby framework for quickly creating Alexa skills as web services. He is one of the most active contributors in the Alexa forums. Read more about Steven.
• Walter Quesada created a video course for Pluralsight that teaches the foundations of developing voice-enabled skills for Echo and building custom Alexa skills in C# and ASP.NET Web API. He also talked about Alexa skill development at numerous tech events. Learn more about Walter.

Get involved

There are many ways you can share educational and inspiring content about AVS and ASK with the Alexa community through your own blog or newsletter, open-source development tools, tutorials, videos or podcasts and social media. You can also organize local meetup groups for like-minded Alexa enthusiasts and developers.

When April L. Hamilton first saw the Amazon Echo in 2014, she knew it was the future. As an Amazon Prime member, April had an early preview of the new device. She immediately knew Echo would be the theme of her next website and blog.

Amazon Echo users and Alexa skill developers will likely know April from her website, www.lovemyecho.com. The site has become a collection of Alexa developer resources, “how-to” articles, news features, and even downloadable Bingo-cards (more on that later).

How does someone become a noted authority on a new, rapidly-evolving technology like Alexa, in such a short time? We sat down with April to find out.

An early adopter knows what she wants

The internet of things enthralled both the technologist and app developer in April. As a blogger, she wanted in on the ground floor with something that had real potential. When Amazon offered its Prime members the chance to pre-order Echo, she knew the internet of things had finally arrived.

“I saw Amazon getting on board with the release of Echo, and I said this is it. Amazon is one of the only companies with the vision, consumer knowledge, tech resources, and dedication to really make it happen.”

Next, she had to figure out how to set up a consumer blog for something so new. April knew Echo would excite consumers and developers alike, and they’d have plenty of questions. With her programming and writing background, she wanted to be the one to answer them.

First a developer, then a blogger

April knew it would be tough writing with authority about something so cutting-edge, but she wasn’t afraid to learn. In fact, April says her prime motivator was the sheer joy of learning about a new technology. So she signed up for Amazon’s Developer Day in early 2015 to get some hands-on experience with the device.

She likened the thrill she felt to when she developed apps for the first smartphones and tablets—but with a twist. “I was a mobile app developer before. Echo needed a unique type of ‘app’. So I thought, what better way to learn about it than to develop skills for it?”

She wondered what skill she could create that consumers would enjoy. Beyond that, she wanted to build an Alexa skill that would intrigue her colleagues, so they too could see the potential of Amazon Echo.

Danny Dong, co-founder and CEO of iMCO, wondered what life would be like if we didn’t have to rely on screens to get the information we want and need. After witnessing countless people checking their phones while on the go, he began to redefine how people carry technology with them every day.

He set out to create the CoWatch, the world’s first Amazon Alexa-integrated smartwatch, to help break the habit of constantly checking a screen for updates. Now, users can ask for the latest weather reports, check the time, and set reminders with their voice and Alexa.

The idea

By early 2016, Dong had a working smartwatch prototype. It had a beautiful design, but it needed an OS to bring it to life. That’s when Dong contacted Leor Stern, co-founder and CEO of Cronologics Corporation.

Stern’s team, assembled from Android and Google veterans, had built a new software platform for smart wearables that helps amplify and support smartphone features. “We built Cronologics platform to unlock the true potential of the smartwatch. We don’t see [a smartwatch] as a tiny, limited extension of a smartphone. It’s an independent device with smart features of its own, not dependent on a smartphone.”

Shortly after Dong partnered with the Cronologics team, Stern began discussions with Amazon how to bring the power of Alexa to the smartwatch. Dong knew he wanted to create a completely new type of smartwatch—one that gives users a choice of how they consume information, either on a screen or by voice.

“We’d been talking to Amazon for a few months, bouncing around ideas like how cool it would be to have Alexa on a watch,” Stern said. “We were also talking with iMCO about the CoWatch when AVS came out. It fit beautifully into our plans.”

The Cronologics platform makes it easy to scroll through messages with a few taps, no phone required. And with Alexa, customers can ask for the latest scores and weather reports, or set reminders and alarms. Now, almost anything you can do with Alexa on an Echo, you can do with CoWatch.

We are excited to announce a new addition to the Alexa family—Nucleus.

Nucleus is an Alexa-enabled connected home intercom system designed to bring families closer together by giving people the ability to make room-to-room, home-to-home and mobile-to-home calls. The average family today is spread across geographies and constantly caught up in daily responsibilities. Nucleus aims to redefine family communication by making it instantaneous. Now you can quickly video chat with grandma on her Nucleus from your smartphone as you’re leaving the office, or never miss family dinner when you’re traveling away from home. 

The Alexa integration on Nucleus makes it easy to check the latest weather report or add items to your shopping list from anywhere in the house. You can talk to Alexa hands-free through Nucleus using the “Alexa” wake word or tap-to-talk using the button on the screen. Simply say, “Alexa, play Adele” or “Alexa, add milk to my list.” You also have access to a growing number of Alexa skills, built by developers using the Alexa Skills Kit, including smart home controls through SmartThings, Insteon and Wink.

You can purchase Nucleus on Amazon.com.

Getting Started with AVS

Developing the next breakthrough consumer tech product? Learn how AVS can help you add rich and intuitive Alexa-enabled experiences to your connected devices, services or applications.

Discover how to use account linking with Login with Amazon to seamlessly integrate your Alexa skills with third-party application. Get step-by-step instructions to speed configuration.

Today, we're pleased to make a tool with source code available to allow you to graphically design interactive adventure games for Alexa. Interactive adventure games represent a new category of skill that allows customers to engage with stories using their voice. With these skills, you can showcase original content or build compelling companion experiences to existing books, movies and games. For example, in The Wayne Investigation skill (4.7 stars, 48 reviews), you’re transported to Gotham City a few days after the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents. You play the part of a detective, investigating the crime and interrogating interesting characters, with Alexa guiding you through multiple virtual rooms, giving you choices, and helping you find important clues. The Magic Door, an original adventure series for Alexa, enables you to tell Alexa what choices to make as you navigate a forest, a garden or an ancient temple. Learn more about game skills on Alexa.

This tool provides an easy to use front-end that allows developers to instantly deploy code for your story, or use the generated code as a starting point for more complex projects. It was written in Node.js by Thomas Yuill, a designer and engineer in the Amazon Advertising team. The tool is available now as a Github project: https://github.com/alexa/interactive-adventure-game-tool

If you want to get started quickly, you can use our Trivia or Decision Tree skill templates that make it easy for developers or non-developers to create game skills. These template makes it easy for developers or non-developers to create a skill similar to “European Vacation Recommender” or “Astronomy Trivia." The templates leverages AWS Lambda and the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) while providing the business logic, use cases, error handling and help functions for your skill. You just need to come up with a decision tree-based idea or trivia game, plug in your questions and edit the sample provided (we walk you through how it’s done). It's a valuable way to quickly learn the end-to-end process for building and publishing an Alexa skill.

For inspiration on developing innovative Alexa skills, check out the Wayne Investigation, a skill developed by Warner Bros. to promote the recently released Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice feature film. In this audio-only, interactive adventure game, you’re transported to Gotham City a few days after the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents. You play the part of a detective, investigating the crime and interrogating interesting characters, with Alexa guiding you through multiple virtual rooms, giving you choices, and helping you find important clues.

The game, created using the Alexa Skills Kit, is collaboration between Amazon, Warner Bros., head writers at DC Comics, and Cruel & Unusual Films (the production house run by Batman v Superman’s director Zack Snyder and executive producers Debbie Snyder and Wes Coller). With these companies behind the game and its affiliation with a superhero film franchise, it’s not surprising that The Wayne Investigation was a big hit.

But it’s become enormously popular on its own accord. Launched on March 1, this was the first Alexa skill to combine Alexa technology with produced audio assets—namely, compelling music and sound effects—and the response has been extraordinary. During its first week, the Wayne Investigation was engaged 7x more (per weekly average) than all other skills combined. Currently the Wayne Investigation rates in the top 5% of skills (earning 4.8 out of 5 stars) and is the #1 skill for both total time spent engaging with the skill and average time spent per user.

The team scripted the experience by building it around a gaming map with directions and actions in each room. Once the script was finalized, they used a decision tree model to translate the experience into code, which is hosted in AWS. From three starting actions, users can make up to 37 decisions, each taking the user down paths that lead to new and iconic Gotham characters and locations before completing the game. An efficient (and lucky) walkthrough of the Wayne Investigation takes 5 to 10 minutes, but fans who want to explore every nook and cranny can spend as long as 40 minutes in this Gotham City.

An added benefit of creating the Wayne Investigation skill is that it led to the creation of a tool that allows developers to graphically design interactive adventure games. Today, we’re pleased to announce that we’ve made a tool with source code available to make it easier for the Alexa community to create similar games.

To experience the skill, simply enable it in your Alexa companion app and then say, “Alexa, open the Wayne Investigation.”

We are excited to introduce a new way to help you quickly build useful and meaningful skills for Alexa. The new Decision Tree skill template makes it easy for developers and non-developers to create skills that ask you a series of questions and then give you an answer. This is a great starter for simple adventure games and magazine style quizzes like ‘what kind of job is good for me’.  This template leverages AWS Lambda and the Alexa Skills Kit, and provides built-in business logic, use cases, error handling, and help functions for your new skill. Simply come up with the idea, plug in your decision tree content, and edit the sample provided. Follow this tutorial and we'll show you how it's done.

Using the Alexa Skills Kit, you can build an application that can receive and respond to voice requests made to Alexa. In this tutorial, you’ll build a web service to handle notifications from Alexa and map this service to a skill in the Amazon Developer Portal, making it available on your Echo, Alexa-enabled device, or Echosim.io for testing and to all Alexa users after publication.

When finished, you'll know how to:

• Create a skill - This tutorial will walk Alexa developers through all the required steps involved in creating a skill. No previous experience required.
• Design a Voice User Interface - Creating this skill will help you understand the basics of creating a working Voice User Interface (VUI) while using a cut/paste approach to development. You will learn by doing and end up with a published Alexa skill. This tutorial includes instructions on how to customize the skill and submit for certification. For guidance on designing a voice experience with Alexa you can also watch this video.
• Use JavaScript/Node.js and the Alexa Skills Kit to create a skill - You will use the template as a guide but the customization is up to you. For more background information on using the Alexa Skills Kit please watch this video.
• Get your skill published - Once you have completed your skill, this tutorial will guide you through testing your skill and sending your skill through the publication process to make it available for any Alexa user to enable.

You will also need an AWS account and an Amazon Developer account. To get a refresher on how to do this, or if you are new to skill development, you can visit our training page to review our past tutorials.

Today’s guest blog post is from Troy Petrunoff, content strategist at AngelHack. Amazon works with companies like AngelHack who are dedicated to advancing the art of voice user experience through hackathons.

This year Amazon Alexa teamed up with AngelHack, the pioneers of global hackathons, for their ninth Global Hackathon Series. Since 2011, the series has exposed over 100,000 developers from around the world to new technologies from sponsors ranging from small startups to large corporations. Amazon Alexa joined the fun this year at nine AngelHack events, sending Solutions Architects and Amazon Echo devices to give talented developers, designers, and entrepreneurs the chance to learn about the Alexa technology. Thirty two teams included Alexa technology into their projects.

Of the nine events Amazon Alexa sponsored, three of the grand prize winners won using Alexa. Winning the AngelHack Grand Prize earned these teams an exclusive invite into the AngelHack HACKcelerator program. AngelHack’s invite-only HACKcelerator program connects ambitious developers with thought leaders and experienced entrepreneurs to help them become more versatile, entrepreneurial, and successful. The program is intended to give developers of promising projects built at a hackathon the opportunity to listen and talk to some of the biggest players in the Silicon Valley tech scene on a weekly basis. All while providing them with the resources to successfully transition their Hackathon project into a viable startup with early traction.In addition to the grand prize, the Amazon Alexa team offered a challenge at each AngelHack event.  The challenge for the series was best voice user experience using Amazon Alexa. In addition to the three grand prize winning teams, two Alexa Challenge winners will also receive an invite into the HACKcelerator program. Participating teams of the HACKcelerator will be provided with mentorship and other resources to prepare them for the Global Demo Day in San Francisco.