beware that's prototyping ina very early stage ...

Alexa Custom Skill – Haushelfer

This Alexa Custom Skill connects Alexa to your Home Assistant instance, allowing you to control devices and request status updates in German.

Prerequisites

• Amazon Developer Account for Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) development
• AWS Lambda access
• Home Assistant with the Conversation API enabled
• Home Assistant Long-Lived Access Token for authentication

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Installation

1. Create the Skill in the Alexa Developer Console

1. Go to the Alexa Developer Console.
2. Click "Create Skill".
3. Enter a name (e.g., the homeassistant).
4. Choose Custom as the skill type and AWS Lambda as the backend service (recommended).
5. Upload the Interaction Model:
   • Navigate to Build → Interaction Model → JSON Editor.
   • Replace the content with the interaction_model.json file from this repository.
   • Click Save Model and then Build Model.

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2. Set up the AWS Lambda Function

1. Open the AWS Lambda Console.
2. Create a new function (Python 3.9 or newer).
3. When creating the Lambda function, assign it a Basic Execution Role so it can write logs to CloudWatch: AWSLambdaBasicExecutionRole
4. Upload the contents of the lambda_function.py file.
5. In Configuration → Environment Variables, set the variables listed below.
6. Copy the ARN of your Lambda function.
7. In the Alexa Developer Console → Endpoint: choose AWS Lambda ARN and paste the ARN.
8. On the AWS Lambda console add enviroment variables as listed below

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Environment Variables

Variable	Description
HA_URL	Base URL of your Home Assistant (e.g., https://my-ha-domain.com).
HA_TOKEN	Long-Lived Access Token from Home Assistant (Profile → Long-Lived Access Tokens).
HA_LANG	Language for the Home Assistant Conversation API (de for German, default: de).
HA_AGENT	(Optional) Agent ID if multiple agents are configured in HA.
HA_HOME	Greeting text when the skill is launched (default: Hausassistent).
HA_PROMPT	(Optional) Additional prompt text for more precise responses from HA.

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Usage

Once the skill is published or enabled in developer mode, you can interact with it using commands such as:

"Alexa, frage den Haushelfer"
"Status Klimaanlage"
"schalte die Kaffeemaschine aus"

Currently the interaction is done in German, but can be easily translated to en ...

Status

• It's working against my HA installation, where it's using a chatgpt assistant client
• I can ask to report the status of the exported sensors in differnet means and also actions are possible.

Drawbacks

• interaction via Alexa developer console and alexa chat of the alexa app are working in ground functionality
• interaction via speach need a good rythmus, which is mainly caused by the alexa frontend
• one-shot actions are currently only working in the chats
• to catch the requests the intent needs a starting word/clause since the simple alexa intent interaction only allows this

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Debugging

• Errors and debug output appear in the CloudWatch Logs of your Lambda function.
• If Alexa reports that Home Assistant is not reachable:
  • Check HA_URL and HA_TOKEN.
  • Make sure your Home Assistant instance is accessible from AWS.