Gain insights into developing voice apps with Alexa Skills Kit. Delve into real projects, learn fundamentals, and discover how to launch apps on the Alexa skill store.

ask.tar.gz

Voice is the next big revolution in tech. As conversational AI finds new and interesting use cases, it's time for developers to make use of the new opportunities to re-use their existing skills to build the next generation of apps powered by voice. 

This course will help you learn how to start developing apps for Alexa using the Alexa Skills Kit. You will be building real and interesting projects that will help you understand the fundamentals. Along the way, you will learn all the skills you need to launch your own apps on the Alexa skill store and reach millions of customers around the world. "Hey Alexa, shall we begin?"

Alexa Skills 101: Building voice apps for Alexa

The **Alexa Skills Kit Command Line Interface (ASK CLI)** is a tool that helps us programmatically manage our Alexa Skills from the command line. There’s a lot of stuff we can do with the ASK CLI. We will only look at a few commands that we can use in the Skill development process for now.

The setup is done for you within this course.


# Installing ASK CLI
If we have npm and Node installed on your system, we can run the following command to set up ASK CLI:
```
npm install -g ask-cli
``` 
# ASK CLI syntax
Here's what the structure of ASK CLI commands look like:
```
ask [options]
ask [command] [options]
ask [command] [subcommand] [options]
```

# Important commands

Let’s look at a few important commands. We will have the opportunity to use some of these in the next section when we build the next project.


## Creating a new project

The `ask init` command helps us initialize a new project by setting up the project with sensible defaults. Here’s what the command looks like:
```
ask init [--hosted-skill-id <hosted-skill-id>]
         [--profile | -p <profile>]
         [--debug]
```

## Testing your  locally

The `ask run` command helps us test Skills locally without needing to deploy the app. It routes requests to our local computer instead of the lambda function. Here’s what it looks like:


```
ask run [--debug-port <debug-port>]
        [--wait-for-attach]
        [--watch]
        [--region <region>]
        [--profile | -p <profile>]
        [--debug]
        [--help]
```
## Deploy your Skill
We can deploy the interaction model and Skill’s lambda function using the `ask deploy` command. Here’s what it looks like:


```
ask deploy [--profile | -p <profile>]
           [--target | -t <target>]
           [--ignore-hash]
           [--debug]
           [--help | -h]
```
## Simulate multi-turn conversations

We can simulate conversations between Alexa and the user using the `ask dialog` command. Here's what it looks like:

```
ask dialog [--skill-id | -s <skill-id>]
           [--locale | -l <locale>]
           [--stage | -g <stage>]
           [--replay | -r <file-path>]
```

# More commands

There are many more commands that can help us develop our Skill locally instead of using the developer console. You can refer to the [documentation](https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/smapi/quick-start-alexa-skills-kit-command-line-interface.html) for more commands.

# Alexa Skills Toolkit extension for VS Code


If you use VS Code as your code editor, you can even install the [Alexa Skills Toolkit extension](https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/ask-toolkit/get-started-with-the-ask-toolkit-for-visual-studio-code.html) , which is another way to debug Skills locally.


A quick introduction to using ASK CLI for building Alexa Skills.

Hello Alexa: An Introduction to the World of Voice

Setting You Up For Success

Your First Skill

Advanced Concepts

Building a Game: Voice Clues

Voice Clues: Coding with ASK CLI

Next Steps

A Quick Introduction to ASK CLI

Installing ASK CLI

ASK CLI syntax