Ask CLI Setup Muttoni Ask CLI Setup

AWS & ASK CLI Setup Guide

AWS Account | AWS CLI | AWS CLI Profile | Amazon Developer Account | ASK CLI | ASK CLI Profile | Deploy a Skill

Colone the Sample Skill

If you are here it means that you have:

✓ An AWS Account (if not, follow the guide to Create a new AWS Account)

✓ The AWS CLI Installed (if not, follow the guide to install AWS CLI)

✓ An Amazon Developer Account (if not, follow the guide to Create a new Amazon Developer Account)

✓ The ASK CLI Installed (if not, follow the guide to install ASK CLI)

✓ An ASK CLI Profile (if not, follow the guide to setup a ASK CLI Profile)

✓ Deployed a sample skill (if not, follow the guide to download deploy a sample skill)

1 – Clone the Color Changer Sample into a New Skill

In this step you will start making changes to the Color Changer skill to give it a different name.

Start by renaming the skill folder. In the parent folder, where you downloaded or cloned the skill, rename skill-sample-nodejs-buttons-colorchanger to quick-colors-skill.

On a Linux, or Mac OS X operating system, execute this command:

mv skill-sample-nodejs-buttons-colorchanger quick-colors-skill

On a Windows computer, the command to rename will be

ren skill-sample-nodejs-buttons-colorchanger quick-colors-skill

After this, the skill folder structure should look like this:

For more information on ASK CLI Configuration see CLI Setup.

For more information on the Skill Manifest, see the developer documentation.

2 – Update Publishing Information of the New Skill

Next, update the deployment parameters to use a different Lambda function and a different skill Id.

Navigate into the hello-world folder and open the skill manifest file (skill.json) in your favorite editor.

Find the publishing information section, toward the top of the file. Change the "name": "Hello World" and update other properties that reference “Color Changer”, such as the summary, example phrases and the description, to say “Quick Colors”:

"publishingInformation": {
  "locales": {
    "en-US": {
      "summary": "Quick Colors",
      "examplePhrases": [
        "Alexa, open quick colors ",
        "Alexa, launch quick colors"
      ],
      "keywords": [
        "This is an example skill to show how to …",
        "The skill follows a simple flow that …"
      ],
      "name": "quick colors",
      "description": "A simple game Echo Buttons game."
    }
  }
}

Close and save the manifest file.

3 – Update the ASK CLI Configuration for the Skill

Open the ASK CLI Configuration file (.ask/config) and change it.

Note

This file may be hidden on your computer, so you may have to open it by pasting in the location, or using a terminal text editor, such as vi or nano.

nano .ask/config

Update the ASK config file:

1. Set the skill_id to an empty string: ""

   A Skill ID is globally unique to your skill, and cannot match any existing skill. Leaving it blank will cause ASK CLI to create a new skill in your account.

2. Change the endpoint uri to "hello-world-skill"

   The endpoint uri will be used by the ASK CLI as the name of the lambda function to be created for the skill.

"deploy_settings": { "color-changer": { "skill_id": "", "was_cloned": false, "merge": { "manifest": { "apis": { "custom": { "endpoint": { "uri": "hello-world-skill" } } …

Save and close the .ask/config file.

4 – Update the skill Language Interaction Model

Navigate into the hello-world folder and open the skill en-US interaction model file (models/en-US.json) in your favorite editor.

Look for the invocationName property of the language model and change it to whatever you want.

"interactionModel": { ​ "languageModel": { ​ "invocationName": "_______", ​ "intents": [

Save and close the models/en-US.json model file.

5 – Deploy the New “Quick Colors” Skill

In the hello-world folder, run ask deploy to create your new skill and to create and upload the code for a new lambda function:

ask deploy

If all is successful, you should see output indicating that the skill was created successfully, and that the code was uploaded to a new lambda function.

-------------------- Create Skill Project --------------------
Profile for the deployment: color-changer
Skill Id: amzn1.ask.skill.012345678-0123-4567-89ab-cafecafecafe
Skill deployment finished.
Model deployment finished.
Lambda deployment finished.
Your skill is now deployed and enabled in the development stage.
Try invoking the skill by saying “Alexa, open {your_skill_invocation_name}” or …

You will notice the ID of your new skill is listed in the command output.

Tip

From now on, as you make changes to the skill, simply execute ask deploy and the ASK CLI will take care of updating your skill configuration parameters, the interaction model, and your skill’s lambda as necessary.

🏆 Congratulations - You Have Completed Lab1 🏆