Adding presistence, session recall, basic conversations with alexa
Alexa is Amazon’s cloud-based voice service which powers the Echo family of devices as well as the companion app on the Android and iOS smartphones. Out of the box, a user can give Alexa a number of voice commands such as creating a to-do-list, set the alarm, play a song, or provide the news. The tasks Alexa performs upon user request are called “Alexa Skills”. Essentially, an Alexa Skill is a voice-driven Alexa app.
Alexa has a number of built-in skills, but developers can build new custom skills, by using Alexa Skill Kit (ASK). The ASK, a collection of APIs and tools, handles the hard work related to the voice interfaces including speech recognition, text-to-speech encoding and natural language processing. ASK helps developers build a skills quickly and easily.