What is the
Alexa Skills Kit?
Alexa, the voice service that powers Amazon Echo, provides capabilities, or skills, that enable customers to interact with devices in a more intuitive way using voice. Examples of skills include the ability to play music, answer general questions, set an alarm or timer, and more.
The Alexa Skills Kit is a collection of self-service APIs, tools, documentation and code samples that make it fast and easy for you to add skills to Alexa. You can also use the Smart Home Skill API, a new addition to the Alexa Skills Kit, to easily teach Alexa how to control your cloud-controlled lighting and thermostat devices. All of the code runs in the cloud – nothing is on any user device.
Get started with our step-by-step checklist.
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Why build skills?
Create a smarter home with Alexa
Alexa, Amazon’s cloud-based voice service, powers voice experiences on millions of devices in the home, including Amazon Echo and Echo Dot, Amazon Tap and Fire TV devices. The Alexa Voice Service (AVS) makes it possible to add voice experiences to any connected hardware that has a speaker and microphone. Now you can use the Smart Home Skill API within the Alexa Skills Kit to easily extend Alexa’s smart home capabilities. You can also create custom skills with ASK. Customers will be able control all their smart home devices simply by using their voice. Learn more.
Build custom voice experiences with Alexa
How will customers use your skills?
Alexa is the wake word and starts the conversation. Your service gets called when customers use your invocation name, such as "Alexa, ask Greeter to say hello world." This example is a simple command-oriented one. ASK also supports sophisticated multi-command dialogues and parameter passing.
The above example would work like this:
"Alexa" is the wake word that
starts the conversation.
"Ask...to" is one of the
supported phrases for
requesting a service.
"Greeter" is the invocation
name that identifies the skill
the customer wants.
"Say hello world" is the
specific request, question
or command.
Ready? Let's get started
Read our getting started guide for an overview of how users interact with your Alexa skill and to learn how to conduct a conversation with your customers. You can also follow these steps:
Design a Voice User Interface
Design an effective voice user interface to give users a great experience
See Voice Design Best Practices
Create a framework to map user requests to intents your service can handle
See Defining the Voice User Interface
Build out sample phrases so that your skill responds to user intents
See Sample Utterances
Build and Host Code
Set up your skill in AWS Lambda or another cloud-based hosting service
See Creating a Lambda Function
Code your skill
See Handling Requests
Review sample code in Node.js or Java
See Alexa Skills Kit Samples
Submit Your Skill
Add your skill to the developer portal
See Registering Skills
Test your skill using our service simulator or on Amazon Echo
See Testing a Skill
Submit your skill for certification
See Submission Checklist
Build a skill in 60 minutes
Our new fact skill and trivia skill templates make it easy to create skills for Alexa. Simply come up with a simple skill idea, like fact of the day or flash cards, and create your voice app with our new step-by-step guides.
Use the alexa-app Node module to quickly build your skill
See the Big Nerd Ranch blog series for step-by-step instructions to quickly develop and test a Node.js skill using alexa-app and alexa-app-server.
Developer stories
See how companies are using skills and the Alexa Skills Kit to enhance the customer experience of their offerings.
