Amazon Alexa has its own development platform that allows developers to teach it new skills. Skills are nothing but conversational capabilities that can be custom-built into Alexa using a combination of Amazon's toolkit with our own. You do not actually need the Amazon Echo smart speaker to get started, but it would be great if you had one. Amazon Echo comes in three sizes: Amazon Echo, Amazon Echo Dot, and Amazon Echo Show. Echo Dot is the most basic version and is priced at £49 at the time of writing. This would suffice for a developer to develop and test custom-developed skills:
The Alexa ecosystem also includes a skill store where custom skills can be published. Published skills can be browsed and installed on your Alexa, thereby adding to Alexa's skill set. This can be done either on Alexa's companion website...