“Alexa, what’s a hot skill to have right now?” “It’s Alexa Skills!”
Artificial intelligence is taking the world by storm, and smart speakers like Alexa will continue to become more pervasive for the foreseeable future. In this hands-on tutorial, I’ll teach you the basics so you can take advantage of this exciting area of technology.
Together, we’ll create a custom Alexa-hosted Node.js skill, from scratch. The skill will tell us random fun facts (which we hard-code into a JS file to keep things simple). If you want to use the same list of fun facts, you can get to them here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13HNaodH9R7f8lu4RwJ9QdcJoJ0xpjNfqCfkHr-NkzN8/edit?usp=sharing.
To dig into more depth on Alexa Skills, I’ve partnered with the good folks at Pluralsight to do a 90-minute course. During the course, we get into more advanced topics like how to save state, how to make Alexa sound more natural, and even how to debug your skill. Check it out! https://pluralsight.pxf.io/P09dLQ
Timestamps:
00:00 – Interacting with the Alexa Skill we’ll be building (fun fact about cats!)
00:18 – Accessing the Alexa Developer Console (requires an Amazon Developer account)
00:45 – Creating a new Alexa Skill, using a custom Alexa-hosted Node.js skill, from scratch
02:04 – Updating an Alexa Skill’s invocation name, saving and building the model
03:20 – Testing an Alexa Skill using the simulator
04:24 – How an Alexa Skill works
06:00 – Adding functionality to our Alexa Skill for fun facts
06:39 – Updating the package.json file
07:19 – Updating the index.js file
08:05 – Explaining the interaction model or front end: wake word, launch, invocation, utterance, slot and intent for an Alexa Skill
09:36 – Adding fun facts into a new JS file
10:24 – Updating index.js to use the fun facts file
10:44 – Updating the speakOutput in HelloWorldIntentHandler to retrieve a random fun fact
11:46 – Explaining shouldEndSession: false in an Alexa Skill
12:31 – Replacing the HelloWorld code with our own
13:35 – Updating the interaction model/front end and intents
15:15 – Testing our updated Alexa Skill
15:26 – How to implement a reprompt and keep the session open
16:20 –Testing the Alexa Skill on your phone
