2 Building a call-and-response skill on Alexa

 

This chapter covers

  • Building with the Alexa Skills Kit SDK for Node.js
  • Becoming acquainted with serverless platforms, including AWS Lambda
  • Building a call-and-response skill
  • Handling intents
  • Communicating with voice

The magic of being a coder is that you are able to create something from nothing—a web page to click on, an app to swipe, an algorithm to sort with. By the end of this chapter, you’ll be able to make an app that talks. And not just talk, but respond. That’s enough to shout, “It’s alive! It’s alive!”

Making Alexa talk involves two steps:

  1. The interaction model —Teaching Alexa how to understand what’s said
  2. The fulfillment —Directing Alexa in how to respond

The skill you’ll build in this chapter is a call-and-response skill; your user will say something and Alexa will respond. End of interaction. In future chapters, you’ll build on top of the skill to make it even more interactive, but this will be sufficient to ease us into Alexa skill development.

2.1 Skill metadata

2.1.1 Interaction model

2.1.2 Invocation name

2.1.3 Intents

2.1.4 Sample utterances

2.1.5 Slots

2.2 The interaction model

2.2.1 Building the intent

2.2.2 Slots

2.3 Fulfillment

2.3.1 Hosted endpoint

2.3.2 AWS Lambda

2.3.3 Coding the fulfillment

Summary