The Alexa Skills Kit Command Line Interface (ask-cli) is used to create, manage, and deploy Alexa skills from the command line.

NOTE: This source is currently for a beta version of the ask-cli. For the latest stable version of the ask-cli, see the ASK CLI quick start guide.

1. Install CLI

$ npm install -g ask-cli-x

2. Configure CLI

Before you can start using the ASK CLI, configure your ASK (and AWS) credentials:

$ askx init

You’ll be prompted to sign into your Amazon developer account. If you choose to have your skill hosted by AWS, you’ll have the option of linking your AWS account as well.

3. Create new skill project

Create a new skill project and follow the prompts from the command:

$ askx new

You'll be asked to select a deployment method for your skill. Currently during the beta, we only support deployment via CloudFormation (@ask-cli/cfn-deployer).

Your new skill project will provide a number of files and folders that make up the structure of an Alexa skill. Here is an overview on each of the files and folders that are created by default:

See the ASK SDKs documentation to learn more about how to build an Alexa skill.

4. Deploy skill to AWS

In order for Alexa to communicate with your skill code, it will need to be deployed and hosted on the cloud. We currently provide support for deployment via CloudFormation to AWS.

$ askx deploy

deploy performs the following steps:

1. skill-package/ resources will be zipped and uploaded to the ASK platform via SMAPI's Skill Package Service.
2. code/ source files will be built and zipped for deployment to AWS. We currently support the build flows of npm for Nodejs, pip for Python and maven for Java developers.
3. infrastructure/ definitions will be used to provision resources on AWS. The code/ zip file from the previous step will be deployed to the provisioned AWS Lambda function. Currently this is deployed by using the @ask-cli/cfn-deployer, you can add any AWS services in the skill's stack template and deploy them together.