AMA Kit Functional Requirements


Design and test your Alexa Mobile Accessory (AMA) to verify that your accessory meets Amazon Alexa's user experience requirements. If your accessory successfully completes the AMA testing process, you will be allowed to use "Alexa Built-in" branding on your product.

Functional requirements

This section lists Amazon's UX and functional requirements for AMA devices.

Common Terms

The following terms are used consistently throughout this document to signify requirements and recommendations:

  • SHALL: Items preceded by SHALL are required for all commercial product releases.
  • SHOULD: Items preceded by SHOULD are recommended for all commercial product releases and significantly improve the Alexa user experience.

The following terms are used consistently throughout this document to describe Alexa features and concepts:

  • Voice-initiated: Products activated by user speech for a hands-free experience. They can also be activated by a user’s touch.
  • Touch-initiated: Products activated by a user's physical action on the product. These products do not support voice-initiated interactions.
  • Tap-to-talk: Touch-initiated products activated by the user pushing and releasing a physical control, such as a button, before speaking.
  • Hold-to-talk: Touch-initiated products activated by the user holding down a physical control, such as a button, while speaking.
  • Attention states: The parts of an Alexa conversation flow, including Listening and Thinking.
  • Physical control: A hardware or GUI control that is used to wake Alexa or adjust the product’s settings.
  • Visual cues: Visual cues are LEDs or GUI elements that provide feedback to the user on Alexa’s state.
  • Audio cues: Audio cues are sounds that provide feedback to the user on Alexa’s transitions between attention states.
  • Multi-turn: A multi-turn interaction refers to situations where Alexa requests additional spoken information from the user to complete an interaction. Multi-turn situations are initiated when your product receives an ProvideSpeech command from the Alexa App.

1. Core Requirements and Recommendations

The following requirements and recommendations are applicable to all Amazon AMA products:

1.1. Your product SHALL be capable of audio input (i.e. capturing user speech via one or more microphones) and streaming captured speech to the Alexa app over the Bluetooth interface, per the specs provided in the AMA Protocol Specification.

1.2. Your product SHALL be capable of audio output (e.g. speaker, headphones, line out, or Bluetooth) using A2DP.

1.2.1 Your product SHOULD provide physical controls for adjusting volume.

1.3. Your product SHOULD provide a physical control to manually initiate an interaction with Alexa.

1.3.1. Your product SHALL enable users to interrupt an Alexa-initiated output (e.g. media playback or Alexa voice response) using voice or a physical control. The physical control that satisfies 1.3 SHALL also be used to interrupt an Alexa-initiated output.

1.3.2. The physical control SHOULD only have the single purpose of initiating Alexa interactions.

1.4. Your product SHALL clearly use an audio cue to indicate the Alexa Listening state for the user. (The Alexa app provides all other sound cues.)

1.4.1. Your product SHOULD use prominent visual cues to satisfy 1.4. If your product uses visual cues, your product SHOULD indicate all attention states as defined in the AVS UX Design Guidelines.

1.4.2. If your product does not use prominent visual cues to satisfy 1.4, your product SHALL use prominent audio cues to indicate when the Alexa Listening state starts and when it stops. You may choose to allow users to disable interactions with Alexa, either through your device itself or through an OEM companion app.

1.4.3. If your product uses both visual and audio cues to satisfy 1.4, the visual and audio cues SHALL be synchronized to indicate when the Alexa Listening state starts and when it stops.

1.5. Your product SHALL support multi-turn interactions with Alexa.

1.5.1. Your product SHALL use the same methods for conveying the start of the Listening attention state for all multi-turn interactions as for the initial interaction.

2. Voice-Initiated Accessory Products

The following guidelines are specific to voice-initiated products and extend the Core Requirements and Recommendations for those products:

2.1. If your accessory has a physical or GUI control to enable and disable the Alexa wake word, toggling the wake word "off" SHOULD not disable the microphone.

2.1.1 Your product SHALL provide audio cues to the user indicate when the wake word is activated and deactivated. These audio cues are described in the AVS UX Design Overview.

2.2. Wake word-enabled products SHALL have an on/off control for the microphone.

3. Touch-Initiated Accessory Products

The following guidelines are specific to touch-initiated products and extend the Core Requirements and Recommendations for those products. Unless noted, the guidelines apply to both tap-to-talk and hold-to-talk products:

3.1. Your product SHALL NOT require the use of a wake word as part of the Alexa interaction.

3.2. Your product SHALL activate its microphones via app request without waiting for a touch interaction in multi-turn situations. The sole exception is hold-to-talk devices where the microphones are only activated when the user holds down a physical control. See also 1.5.

3.4. Your product SHALL support the use of physical controls to stop alerts or text-to-speech (TTS).

4. Accessory Companion App Requirements

The following requirements apply to all accessory companion apps:

4.1. The accessory companion app SHALL honor the following deep-linking requirements:

4.1.1. If the user has not already installed the Alexa app, the OEM companion app SHALL re-direct to the appropriate app store entry for the user to download the app.

4.1.2. The accessory companion app SHALL provide a deep link to the mobile phone OS Settings menu item to configure the Alexa app.

4.1.3 The accessory companion app SHALL read the accessory firmware and determine the minimum allowed firmware version for Alexa.

4.1.4 The accessory companion app SHALL enable deep linking so that the Alexa app can allow users to easily update accessory settings.

4.2. If the accessory companion app includes content to help users to connect to Alexa, that content SHALL follow Alexa branding guidelines. See Amazon Alexa Brand External for guidance.

6. Branding Requirements

6.1. If the packaging for the OEM device includes any references or images related to Alexa, that content SHALL follow Alexa branding guidelines. See AVS UX Logo and Brand Usage for guidance.

7. Bluetooth

All AMA products SHALL support the following Bluetooth capabilities:

7.1. Your product SHOULD support the Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) Bluetooth profile. If your product supports A2DP, it SHALL provide support for the following items:

  • Receiving digital audio streams from an A2DP SOURCE device.
  • Audio/Video Remote Control Profile (AVRCP) Bluetooth profile.

7.2. Your product SHALL provide the following Codec support to encode user utterances for the Amazon Alexa cloud, depending on your Bluetooth protocol:

OS Bluetooth LE Bluetooth Classic (BR/EDR)
Android OPUS OPUS and/or mSBC
iOS (no MFi chip) OPUS Not applicable
iOS (w/MFi chip) OPUS and/or mSBC OPUS and/or mSBC

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Last updated: Nov 17, 2023