Hello World with Alexa and AWS Lambda

Creating an Alexa Skill with AWS Lambda is easy. I used the Hello World sample skill and this tutorial to deploy my first Alexa skill using AWS Lambda: Deploy a Sample Custom Skill to AWS Lambda. I had to jump between many pages to complete the tutorial so I summarize the steps with the corresponding links in this post.

Pre-requisites:

• Register for Amazon Web Services
• Register for Alexa Developer Portal

Prepare a Node.js Sample to Deploy in Lambda

• Install Node.js and Visual Studio Code locally on your machine
• Download the sample code for Hello World from GitHub
• Open the folder in VS Code and review the files
  • The folder speechAssets is for the Alexa Developer Portal
  • The folder src is for the AWS Lambda function
• Navigate to View > Integrated Terminal, navigate to the folder src and run “npm install alexa-sdk”
• Select all the contents of the src folder, including the node_modules folder, and create a zip file

Set Up a New Skill in the Developer Portal and Get the Skill ID

• Go to the Alexa Developer Portal
• Follow the steps at Register a New Skill to add a new skill
  • Select language
  • Enter name and invocation name

Creating the Lambda Function for the Sample

• Go to the AWS Management Console
• Follow the steps at Create the Lambda Function for the Sample to add a new Lambda function and configure the Alexa Skills Kit Triggers using the Skill ID from the Alexa Developer Portal

Complete the Configuration of the Skill on the Developer Portal

• Go to the Alexa Developer Portal and edit your skill
• Navigate to Custom > Endpoint, select AWS Lambda ARN, then paste the ARN for your Lambda function in the Default Region box.
• Navigate to Custom > Interaction Model > JSON Editor, paste in the interaction-model.json, then click Save Model and Build Model.

Test your Skill

• In the Alexa Developer Portal, navigate to Test: “Test is enabled for this skill” is disabled by default so enable it
• In the Alexa Simulator, enter “hello world”
• Check the JSON Input request and the JSON Output response

Additional resources

• If you want to debug the AWS Lambda locally in Visual Studio code, use this Alexa technical tutorial.