About the Alexa Developer Console

Use the Alexa developer console to create and publish Alexa skills. The developer console is a browser-based UI that supports all phases of the skill development workflow. You can create a new skill, choose the voice interaction model, add endpoints to the backend service that hosts your skill, submit your skill for certification, and monitor the performance of your skill.

If you want to create and publish Alexa skills from the command line, see Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) Command Line Interface (CLI) Overview. Or, you can create skills in Visual Studio Code (VS Code) with the ASK Toolkit extension.

For details about the skill development workflow, see What is the Alexa Skills Kit?

Skill development overview

The Alexa developer console organizes skill building into the following tasks:

  • Build – Use the Build page to configure your skill, specify the endpoints for your skill service, and more.
    The specific steps that you complete depend on the voice interaction model that you choose when you create your skill. For example, for a skill with a custom model, you create the voice interface with intents and sample utterances. For a skill with the pre-built smart home model, you provide the account linking configuration.
  • Code – When you choose Alexa-hosted for your backend resources, you can use the Code page to implement your skill code in the console and deploy the code to Amazon Web Services (AWS) Lambda. The Code page is available to custom skills only. For more details about Alexa-hosted skills and the AWS resources available to your skill, see About Alexa-hosted Skills.
  • Test – You can test the skill in the development stage or the live stage. Use the Alexa simulator in the Test page to test your skill with text and voice.
  • Distribution – Use the Distribution page to define information about your skill that appears in the Alexa Skills Store.
  • Certification – Before you can publish your skill to the Alexa Skills Store, Amazon certifies your skill. Use the Certification page to validate your skill, run pre-certification tests, and submit the skill for certification.
  • Analytics – Use the Analytics page to review metrics for your skill, such as number utterances, customers, and intents invoked.

Developer console UI

The following images show the pages on the developer console.

Screenshot of the build page Build page
Build page for a custom skill on the developer console
Screenshot of the Code page for custom skills that use Alexa-hosted skills
Code page on the developer console for an Alexa-hosted custom skill
Screenshot of the Test page
Test page on the developer console for a custom skill
Screenshot of the Distribution page
Distribution page on the developer console
Screenshot of the Certification page
Certification page on the developer console
Screenshot of the Analytics page
Analytics page on the developer console

Prerequisites

Before you develop an Alexa skill, make sure that you have the following items:

Manage access to the developer console

The first user associated with an Alexa developer account is the account owner and has full rights to administer the developer account. As account owner, you can invite additional users to your developer account to give them access to work on your Alexa skills based on their role. For details about roles and adding users to your developer account, see Manage user permissions.

Get started

To get started with skill building in the developer console, see Create and Manage Skills in the Alexa Developer Console.

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Last updated: Jan 26, 2024