Create Custom Skill

Create Alexa Custom Skills.

Overview

npx create-custom-skill my-skill
// or npm init custom-skill my-skill
cd my-skill
sls deploy

Available Commands

Using the serverless-smapi plugin, the following commands are available.

alexa model build ............. Build local interaction model from model described in yml files. alexa model list .............. List your Alexa model alexa model update ............ Update your Alexa model alexa skill ................... List your Alexa skills alexa skill create ............ Create your Alexa skill alexa skill delete ............ Delete your Alexa skill alexa skill list .............. List your Alexa skill alexa skill update ............ Update your Alexa skill

Great! That was easy but I want to use ASK CLI tool, too!

Sure. The project is compatible with ASK CLI.

Good. But I want to set a specific profile of the CLI to be used by this tool

You can do that by editing the profile value in serverless.yml file or during project scaffold using npm init custom-skill -p <profile> <skill-name>

Aha. Now I want to debug my skill.

Good. If you are using Visual Studio code, you can just open debug tab and start the debug configuration debug with bst proxy. See bst proxy for details.

You can also start debug session with npm start debug which will run sls alexa skill update -d (update the skill manifest with debug configuration - see debugSkillManifest in serverless.yml file). Now you need to start a local lambda service, which you can do by running sls offline start -l .webpack/service/src.

Wow. But my skill requires so many sample utterances. Can this tool help me?

Of course. Use intents.yml file to describe the grammar for the sample utterances. Use types.yml to list the types you want to use.

Example: (recipe|receipes) for (|a|an) {Item} will expand to:

recipe for {Item}
receipes for {Item}
recipe for a {Item}
receipes for a {Item}
recipe for an {Item}
receipes for an {Item}

Ehhh. My skill got very complex and I don't want to build and update the model using local intents.yml file any more.

Just pass the skip option sls deploy --skip model

Ahhh. The tool always looks for confirmation when I want to update my skill manifest or model. Is there a shortcut?

Just pass always yes to deploy sls deploy -y

QQ. Can I use a single manifest and/or model to do bulk skill management?

yes. Serverless allows you to define a variable in many ways.