Build An Alexa Fact Skill

What You Will Learn

• AWS Lambda
• Alexa Skills Kit (ASK)
• Skill Builder
• Voice User Interface (VUI) Design
• Skill Certification

What You Will Need

• Amazon Developer Portal Account
• Amazon Web Services Account
• The sample code on GitHub.
• Simple graphical editing tool
• At least 25 facts about your favorite topic.

What Your Skill Will Do

A fact skill for Alexa is a "Hello, World" example. You provide a list of interesting facts about a topic, and Alexa will read one of those facts to your user when they start your skill. The purpose of building this skill is to teach you how the different pieces of the Alexa development process fit together, while still producing an interesting, useful skill that others can enjoy.

This Alexa skill template helps you create your first fact skill. Your users will be able to say things like:

• "Alexa, ask Superhero Facts for a new fact."
• "Alexa, start Baseball Facts."
• "Alexa, ask Titanic Facts to give me another fact."

Alexa will respond to all of these requests with responses like these:

• "Here's your superhero fact: Iron Man's armor used to include roller skates."
• "Here's your baseball fact: Ralph Kiner is the only player ever to lead the league in homers for seven years in a row — his first seven years as a major league player."
• "Here's your Titanic fact: The ship burned around 600 tons of coal a day – hand shoveled into its furnaces by a team of 176 men. Almost 100 tons of ash were ejected into the sea each day."

If you would like to see an example of this skill in action, you can enable the Gloucester Facts from the Alexa Skill Store.