alexa-skill-boilerplate

This Boilerplate provides a skeleton for a custom Alexa Skill based on the Alexa Skill Kit for NodeJS used with the ASK-CLI, where the functionality is hosted as an AWS Lambda function.

ASK-CLI Note: There seems to be a bug when initializing ask-cli with a custom AWS profile, so for now use the default profile.

Requirements

AWS Lambda Account Amazon Developer Account ASK CLI (npm i -g ask-cli)

Getting Started

clone this repo e.g. with git clone https://github.com/SmeechDE/alexa-skill-boilerplate.git navigate in your lambda directories and npm i adjust the .ask/config , skill.json and write your function deploy your skill with the ASK-CLI

Testing locally

For testing locally it is possible to use the alexa-skill-test package. To install it execute npm i -g alexa-skill-test in your terminal. After starting it with alexa-skill-test navigate to localhost:3000 in your browser. The autogenerated JSON is currently buggy and it is recommended to copy a JSON from the Alexa Developer Portal -> Alexa -> Getting Started -> Your Skill -> Test Section.

Note: If you get a timeout error when executing requests, disable the responsible code with a comment.

Deploying

For a shorter deploy time you can deploy only parts of your skill: ask deploy -t skill ask deploy -t model ask deploy -t lambda

For further information see the documentation for the Ask Cli on https://developer.amazon.com/de/docs/smapi/ask-cli-intro.html