Alexa Development 101

This repository contains code samples and supporting documentation for the course: Alexa Development 101 - An introduction to building skills for Amazon Alexa.

About the course

If want to start building skills for Amazon Alexa and you're new to programming - this course was created especially for you! By the end of this course, you'll be able to create custom skills for Amazon Alexa - from scratch - even if you've never written a line of code in your life. Guaranteed!

There are a lot of great courses and tutorials available for learning how to build Alexa skills. But, most require some prior programming experience. This course is different - you won't need any prior experience other than some basic computer skills.

You'll learn how to create your fist skill for Amazon Alexa using Javascript and Node.js. In the course, you'll create a custom Alexa skill for your own private use or that can be published publicly - and you won't just be copying and pasting to do it - you'll be creating it from scratch and based on your own idea.

The course is made up of a collection of short lessons - all but one of them are under 10-minutes but most are around 5-minutes. So, you can learn in small chunks, when you have the time. Of course, if you prefer, you could also work through the entire course at once - that would probablly take you about 2-3 hours (including time to do the exercises).

The course goal

The goal of this course is give you a solid introduction to building skills for Amazon Alexa while also getting you started as a programmer; as a hobby, or perhaps the start to a new career. Building skills for Amazon Alexa is a lot of fun and it's also a great way to start learning how to code.

What you will learn

In this course, you will learn ...

• how Alexa works from a high-level technical perspective
• what the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) and the Alexa Voice service (AVS) are
• how Alexa processes and responds to requests
• how to setup skills in the Amazon Developer Portal
• about intents and slots
• how to setup skill services using AWS Lambda
• about Node.JS and programming with Javascript
• how to understand, modify, and use skill templates (aka: blueprints)
• about NPM modules and the Alexa Skills Kit SDK
• different ways to test skills during development
• how to create a custom skill from scratch
• how to go beyond this course to get more experience

Course Outline

• 00:00:02 - Lesson 01: Welcome & Course Introduction
• 00:01:27 - Lesson 02: A Technical Overview of Alexa
• 00:06:11 - Lesson 03: Skills Setup in the Developer Portal
• 00:12:45 - Lesson 04: Understanding Intents and Slots
• 00:16:16 - Lesson 05: Creating Skill Services
• 00:24:09 - Lesson 06: Understanding Skill Code
• 00:32:06 - Lesson 07: Skill Testing
• 00:37:33 - Lesson 08: Planning and Design
• 00:46:55 - Lesson 09: Building a Complete Skill
• 00:59:30 - Lesson 10: Skill Certification
• 01:06:19 - Lesson 11: Next Steps

What you need

All you'll need for this course is a computer with a Web browser and Internet access. You don't even need an Amazon Echo (although it's nice to have one). And, it doesn't matter if you prefer a Mac, Windows, or Linux - whichever you're most comfortable with will work perfectly.