Amazon recently announced a new feature called ‘Alexa Blueprints’ which will allow Alexa owners to create their own Alexa skills and responses without requiring any coding knowledge. With the help of Alexa Blueprints, users will be able to create their own voice apps, according to a recent report from TechCrunch.
In a statement about the announcement, Steve Rabuchin, VP Amazon Alexa, said:
“Alexa Skill Blueprints is an entirely new way for you to teach Alexa personalized skills just for you and your family…You don’t need experience building skills or coding to get started – my family created our own jokes skill in a matter of minutes, and it’s been a blast to interact with Alexa in a totally new and personal way.”
In order to start building custom skills, Alexa owners will have to head to the Alexa Blueprints website and select a template for the new skill. As of now, Amazon has released over 20 templates across categories like Fun & Games, At Home, Storyteller, and Learning & Knowledge. Using the templates, Alexa owners will be able to easily fill in information and make their own custom skill. Creating a new skill doesn’t include any complicated steps and no technical knowledge whatsoever
In order to make the process really easy for beginners, the templates are even pre-filled and work as is, to help users try them out before customizing them. Upon creating and publishing a custom skill, the new skill will be available to all Alexa-enabled devices associated with the user’s Amazon account, however, the skills won’t be available for other users or in the Alexa Skills Store.
Users will be able to see all the skills they created on the ‘Skills You’ve Made’ page on the Blueprints website, where they’ll be able to easily enable/disable or delete the skills. As of now, Alexa Blueprints are only available in the US and the company has released no information about a global roll-out yet.
