About “My Zoo” Skill

My Zoo is a fun little Alexa skill you can make yourself using my Quick & Dirty tutorial series, “Create a Custom Alexa Skill”.

With My Zoo, Alexa makes animal sounds. A My Zoo interaction might go something like this:

User: “Alexa, open My Zoo”
Alexa: “Welcome to My Zoo, I make animal sounds!”
Alexa: “What animal do you want to hear?”
User: “a lion”
Alexa: “roar!”

This year, 2021, I’m building the My Zoo series, adding an Alexa developer concept at a time. With each post, you’ll progressively make your skill more engaging and personalized. We’ll also explore various skill builder options.

Sound like fun? Great!

Get started with the core “Create a Custom Alexa Skill” posts:

1. Create a Custom Alexa Skill, Part 1 (“Hello Zoo!”)
2. Create a Custom Alexa Skill, Part 2 (Intents, Utterances, Slots)
3. Create a Custom Alexa Skill, Part 3 (Code an Intent)

Then explore these features:

Add Persistent Data to a Custom Alexa Skill using Amazon S3
Add Persistent Data to a Custom Alexa Skill using Amazon DynamoDB

I’ll be adding to this series, including how to use the CLI to build skills, logging, automated testing, adding visuals for devices that support it, and more. Don’t miss new posts: add https://leaherb.com to your RSS feed.

Note: Before launching custom skills for public access, you’ll need to understand concepts like effective design, “discoverability”, certification, etc. These concepts are outside the scope of this particular tutorial series.

Note: this tutorial series uses Python on the back end. Don’t worry if you are not familiar with the Python programming language, I provide all the code you need and how to add it. You’re welcome to use (your own) Node.js if you prefer, of course.