Amazon has opened up its Alexa platform so that anyone — and we mean absolutely anyone — can create a custom Alexa skill.skills are Alexa apps that provide
Amazon has opened up its Alexa platform so that anyone — and we mean absolutely anyone — can create a custom Alexa skill.
skills are Alexa apps that provide Amazon’s assistant with additional features. For instance, there’s a popular Jeopardy! skill, which, when enabled, allows Alexa to serve up a trivia game for you to play. There are tonnes of free skills available in the Alexa skill store. But now, thanks to Amazon’s new Alexa Skill Blueprints initiative, you can make your own — and you don’t need to be an app developer to do so.
Amazon’s latest initiative, Alexa Skill Blueprints, essentially allows you to personalise your Alexa experience. You can create your own family trivia game skill, for instance, instead of using the existing Jeopardy! skill or some other trivia skill available. There is no coding knowledge required, because Amazon’s offering «Blueprint templates» that make it easy for you to make an Alexa skill within minutes.
At launch, you can browse more than 20 templates across these four categories:
First, watch these tutorials from Amazon:
Next, follow our step-by-step instructions:
We also have a gallery here that walks you through the process:
If you named your custom skill, «John’s Birthday», you can just say, «Alexa, open John’s Birthday skill.» If it’s a trivia skill, Alexa will open the skill and start asking you the trivia questions that you’ve added to the skill. If it’s a story skill, you’ll hear the story you added, etc.
Yep. Watch these promo videos from Amazon for examples on custom skills you can create:
You can see all the skills you’ve made from here:
Go to the Alexa Skill Blueprint Help Hub for more information.
