List Skill Certification Guide


After you complete implementation and test of your list skill, you can submit it for certification and publication.

Certification guidelines for list skills

To achieve certification, make sure that your list skill fulfills the following requirements:

In addition, your skill manifest must meet the following requirements:

  • Populate the publishingInformation and privacyAndCompliance objects correctly.
  • The testingInstructions field in the publishingInformation object must indicate how to link the third-party account to the skill, and provide credentials for this account, so that the tester can duplicate the skill workflow in its entirety. If your skill includes list synchronization functionality, mention this fact in the testing instructions.
  • The privacyPolicyUrl for each of the included locales must include a link to the Privacy Policy that applies to your skill.
  • Include appropriate phrases in the examplePhrases array in the publishingInformation object. Follow the typical standards for certification.
  • Request Lists Read or Lists Write permissions in your skill only when the permissions are required to support the features and services provided by your skill.

If your skill includes a custom component, your skill must also meet the custom certification requirements.

Submit Your Skill for Certification Through the ASK CLI

To submit a list skill for certification, you use the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) CLI submit-skill-for-certification command.

While the skill is in the certification process, you can't make any further edits to the configuration. If you want to make a change, you can withdraw your skill from certification. Use the withdraw-skill-from-certification command, make the desired changes, and then use the submit-skill-for-certification command to re-submit your skill for certification.

After Amazon completes the certification review, you receive an email at the address associated with your Amazon developer account:

  • If the skill is certified, the email provides an estimate for when the skill becomes available to end users.
  • If the skill isn't certified, the email provides information about the issues that you need to correct. You can make any necessary changes, and then re-submit for certification.

Publication Status

Although you can't manage a skill through the developer portal, you can view its current publication status in the developer portal on your list of skills, in the Status column. The column shows the following statuses:

  • DEVELOPMENT The skill is available only to you. If you have enabled it for testing, you can test it on devices registered to your developer account.
  • CERTIFICATION Amazon is currently reviewing the skill for publication. During this time, you can't edit the configuration.
  • PUBLISHED The skill has been published and is available to users. You can't edit the configuration for live skills. To start development on an updated version, make your changes on the development version instead.

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Last updated: Jan 26, 2024