
Show HN: Flask-Ask – Amazon Echo Development in Python - johnwheeler
https://johnwheeler.org/flask-ask
======
johnwheeler
Hi Everybody!

For the last month I've been working on a Flask extension called Flask-Ask I
want to shamelessly plug. The "Ask" part stands for the "Alexa Skills Kit",
which is the service behind the Amazon Echo family of devices.

[https://johnwheeler.org/flask-ask/](https://johnwheeler.org/flask-ask/)

As the Echo and products like it penetrate the market, investments in NLP and
AI will go up and latency in dialogue will go down (latency is already at <=
1.5 secs!). It's a fantastic time to start learning.

I've used a lot of web frameworks, and I love Flask! I've used it pretty much
exclusively for the last 5 years for all my projects. The Alexa Skills Kit is
based on its own Request/Response model built in JSON on top of REST, so it
made sense for me to incorporate a lot of Mitsuhiko's architectural patterns,
like decorator-based routing, context locals, and templates, and adapt them
for Flask-Ask.

I put up a 5-min tutorial for Flask-Ask here:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC2zi4WIFX0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC2zi4WIFX0)

You can develop without an Echo Device using Echosim:
[https://echosim.io/](https://echosim.io/)

Thanks for checking this library out. Of course, there's always room for
improvement. Open an issue and start a discussion!

[https://github.com/johnwheeler/flask-
ask/issues](https://github.com/johnwheeler/flask-ask/issues)

