Building an Alexa Skill without using the SDK

Amazon has written a "Hello World" example for building an Alexa Skill. At first glance, it looks like just what you need to get into Alexa Skills development because it's short and clear. But take a second look and you'll notice it requires an external dependency. It brings in the alexa-sdk npm package. I'll show that not only don't you need the alexa-sdk to teach Alexa a Skill but you might actually be better off without it. var Alexa = require('alexa-sdk'); The alexa-sdk claims to let you "focus on your skill's logic instead of boilerplate code." But it's exactly this… [Continue Reading]