
Alexa Skills Kit Developer Preview - cek
https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-skills-kit
======
uniclaude
Lots of code examples in JS and Java (even though I believe a github
repository would have been better than zip archives...), a $100M investment
fund, and a real integration with their services and devices. Amazon seems to
be really serious about this.

When Siri came out, I found myself wanting to build a service using it and got
disappointed (even though the reasons not to open the API were obvious), so
I'm now happy to see Amazon calling developers with a voice based API. I'd
like to see how this will pan out.

~~~
cek
Needs to be renamed to AlexaSkillsKit.NET, but here's C# support:

[https://github.com/AreYouFreeBusy/AlexaAppKit.NET](https://github.com/AreYouFreeBusy/AlexaAppKit.NET)

~~~
cordite
AppKit sounds way too Apple-y these days. Though a tad generic compared to
"HealthKit" and the like

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billyhoffman
The "Alexa" name is starting to get confusing. Amazon already owns something
called Alexa, a website/service which provide information about a website's
stats and ranking.

Worse, Amazon also offers an API/SDK to Alexa via AWS [1], which offers a
surprising amount of information about a website that they gather (Global
Rankings, regional rankings, standard <META> tag scrapping, DMOZ info,
IP/location info, email address/telephone/address and other contact info,
bunch more stuff). It's actually pretty amazing, but the API and documentation
is terribly out-of-date.

This got my hopes up that Amazon had done an overhaul of the Alexa
rankings/info API... [sigh]

[1] [http://aws.amazon.com/awis/](http://aws.amazon.com/awis/)

~~~
fezz
It's also a camera:
[http://www.arri.com/camera/alexa/](http://www.arri.com/camera/alexa/)

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vincentriemer
Exited to see these new SDKs for the Echo, using it daily it definitely gives
you a feeling for the vast potential of the platform given 3rd party
contribution. Using AWS Lambda also makes development of Echo apps makes it
extremely easy, it took me only about an hour to get a working prototype of a
simple app working.

I'm looking forward to attending the Boston amazon developer day this weekend
to really dig deep into all the sdks and get some questions answered from the
team.

~~~
slg
AWS Lambda definitely seems like the way to go. It looks like hosting the
service yourself gets complicated very quickly when you have to factor in
things like authenticating the requests. [1]

I'm also not sure how it would technically work, but I do wish there would be
some way to run this locally. I would love to get more access to some of the
hardware on my local network, but I would be hesitant to open the same up to
the public internet. I guess Amazon is (smartly) targeting more consumer
focused developers and not hobbyists working on their own pet projects.

[1] - [https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-
sk...](https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-skills-
kit/docs/developing-an-alexa-skill-as-a-web-service)

------
rhpistole
It's not at all clear to me how they're namespacing the invocation names.

Do they need to be unique across all skills?

Will there be a land-rush on all the good two and three work invocation names?

Do I manually select which skills will be enabled for my Echo, and only those
invocation names will be accepted? What about conflicts?

~~~
notatoad
it would be great if there was no namespacing, and multiple developers could
register the same phrase. alexa/echo (what's this thing called?) should learn
based on your usage what service you want to respond to a certain phrase.

For example, "turn on the lights" should work with whatever smart home hub
alexa can find on it's wifi network, not just with whatever smart home company
registers the phrase first.

~~~
kels
That would be nice. I have LIFX bulbs and don't want to say Alexa, ask LIFX to
turn on the lights.

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swalsh
I just ordered an echo for my hobby workshop, i'm super excited for this
thing. My dream is to be able to import google sketchup models (somewhere)
than as i'm working be able to ask it questions about the model.

So like, imagine i'm standing in front of a freshly milled piece of oak, and
i'm roughly marking out my pieces:

"Alexa, What are the dimensions for the top side apron"

Even cooler, if i had a camera in there too

"Alexa, where did I put my tape measure?"

~~~
shostack
So basically you want Jarvis from Iron Man. Might help to connect it to
cameras too.

------
wallacrw
There's also
MindMeld--[https://expectlabs.com/docs](https://expectlabs.com/docs)

With Alexa, you have to bet on Amazon winning the IoT game. Amazon is great at
ecommerce (mostly because they don't care about making money), but it's not
clear they're great at platforms.

But if all you want is the functionality of an Echo that you can customize,
then go with a well-funded startup staffed by some of the best AI engineers in
the world offering similar and often better capabilities, and build your own
so you can integrate it wherever you want.

That's MindMeld.

~~~
portmanteaufu
What a beaming endorsement of an Expect Labs product from the Director of
Business Development at Expect Labs. :/

~~~
wallacrw
Correct.

------
nmjohn
> Amazon is investing up to $100 million to support developers, manufacturers,
> and start-ups of all sizes who are creating unique and innovative
> experiences designed around the human voice. Whether that’s creating new
> Alexa capabilities with the Alexa Skills Kit, building devices that use
> Alexa for novel voice experiences using the Alexa Voice Service, or
> something else entirely, if you have a visionary idea, we’d love to talk to
> you.

~~~
cek
Reference: [https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-
fu...](https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-fund)

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chinathrow
Still not wanting an active listening device in my own walls, closed source,
closed server APIs, not disclosed NSLs received by Aamazon etc etc.

Not for me or my family.

~~~
toomuchtodo
For every one of you, there are several that don't mind. That's not to
denigrate your opinion, just a consequence of priorities in people's lives.

~~~
oaktowner
Probably more like 100 who don't care for every one that does. Or 1000. Not
here on HN, of course, but in the potential customer base.

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jakozaur
Looks like a product of Amazon acquisition of IVONA:
[http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/24/amazon-gets-into-voice-
reco...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/24/amazon-gets-into-voice-recognition-
buys-ivona-software-to-compete-against-apples-siri/)

~~~
speechduh
IVONA is text to speech only.

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mo1ok
I was in the middle of building a home automation AI as a side
project...seriously psyched about this.

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fredkelly
Just sold my Echo after getting little value from it - must admit I was
holding out for an API, I think it will be 100x more useful once we see some
good 3rd-party integrations.

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joshu
Can it tak without being prompted?

~~~
dbish
No. At the moment, Alexa only responds when spoken to.

~~~
joshu
i wish i could have it announce stuff via API. "garage door is open!"

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jslakro
How this could be better than a Dragonfly+NLTK solution in python, for
example?

~~~
wallacrw
Accuracy and information retrieval.

The best systems--Siri, Google Now--have 95%+ ASR accuracy AND can find the
right answer among millions of possibilities once they've broken down the
utterance.

Combining human-like ASR & NLP with super accurate search capabilities is
hard.

