Comprehensive Alexa Skill Development course (2018 Updated)

Alexa forms an intent request from the interaction model by decoding the invocation name, sample utterances, and slots, then sends a JSON to your endpoint via a Lambda function.

Explore how AWS lambda powers Alexa custom skills by handling Alexa Skills Kit events with Node.js, while configuring region, inline coding, and zip uploads.

Explore Node.js as a JavaScript runtime built on Chrome's V8 for nonblocking I/O, enabling server-side scripting for lambda functions, with basics like hello world, variables, strings, and loops.

Explore JavaScript functions in Node.js, including anonymous and named functions, callbacks, and forEach; learn var and let scoping, strict mode, and object creation with this.

Create object definitions in JavaScript using constructor functions and the new keyword. Explore Node.js modules with require and exports, and grasp non-blocking IO and event-driven patterns.

Develop a lambda function for the greetings skill, wiring a handler in index.js with exports and preparing responses for launch and intent requests in aws lambda.

Learn to handle the hello intent requests in a greetings skill, extract the user's name from slots, generate a time-based greeting, end the session, and test the lambda function end-to-end.

Improve the greeting skill by fetching random quotes from the forismatic api and test it locally with lambda local before deploying to AWS Lambda.

Explore the Alexa sessions feature to remember context across intents within a session by using session attributes, enabling multi-turn conversations with standard built-in intents.

Master how to include a display card in an Alexa skill response, using simple and standard cards with title, content, and optional images.

Develop automated testing for the greetings skill in the comprehensive Alexa skill development course using mocha to validate intents, speech response, and correct versus incorrect indications through structured test cases.

Deploy your Alexa skill from a local web server to the internet by using secure tunneling with ngrok, port forwarding, or hosting on Heroku, then test and debug the endpoint.

Learn how to host and deploy an Alexa skill on Heroku using Python and Flask, configure Git and Heroku pipelines, run tests, read logs, and fix intents and endpoint issues.

Explore Alexa skill publishing requirements, including Lambda vs own web service hosting, HTTPS with valid certificates, domain validation, and signature-based request verification using Flask-Ask.

Develop, test, and deploy a greetings Alexa skill using Flask-Ask, deploying to Heroku, while handling encoding and Unicode issues and validating requests and responses.

Set up a food nutrition lookup Alexa skill by using a template, establishing a production-ready lambda, and implementing version control, packaging, intents, slots, and robust logging and error handling.

Develop a food nutrition lookup skill by coding the food item slot, retrieving calorie information from a database, and implementing a robust, case-insensitive search with regular expressions.

Develop the nutrition lookup skill by turning database results into spoken items, handling no-match and max responses, and prompting users for more information to refine searches.

Test the food nutrition lookup skill, focusing on launch handling and session management. Validate slots, responses, and speech output across multiple item queries.

Explore certification requirements for an Alexa skill by walking through Amazon's submission checklist, security guidelines, and card testing, using the nutrition lookup skill as a practical example.

Extend the food nutrition lookup skill to include protein and fat data, group-based searches, and a quiz mode with nutrition information; implement support for multiple nutrition items and publish upgrades.

Master account linking with Google OAuth 2.0, configure the Google API console, and manage scopes, consent screen, and tokens to access Gmail data securely.

Set up an email checker Alexa skill by configuring the developer portal, defining intents and sample utterances, creating a lambda function, and handling Google OAuth scopes.

Explores implementing a voice password for an email checker Alexa skill, including password encryption, hashing, and pin verification, with AWS STK integration.

Develop an email checker skill with voice password testing, covering pin setup, secret pin verification, token handling, and pin recovery for Alexa skills.