Amazon says skill connections, which enable developers to tap into features provided by other Alexa apps and services, are now generally available
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat :
Context & Ripple Effects
Skill connections graduated from the October 2018 preview, which Amazon had confined to just printing and reservations, into general availability — any Alexa developer can now wire their skill into features exposed by other skills and services. It is the latest step in a long build-out of the Alexa developer platform: the Smart Home Skill API in 2016, the Music Skill API for streaming services, and the discovery interface tests that let developers declare what questions their skills can answer.
First-order effects
- Alexa developers no longer need to build commodity features themselves — printing and reservation flows pioneered in preview can now be invoked from their own skills, cutting development cost for the long tail of skill makers.
Second-order effects
- Skills that expose useful features become infrastructure for other skills, shifting value on the platform toward feature providers and giving Amazon more inter-skill traffic to route — which feeds the discovery problem Amazon was already attacking with its question-matching interface tests.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Alexa skills stop being isolated voice apps and become a composable service layer, the same direction Amazon pushed weeks later with skill personalization going generally available — the platform maturing from an app store into an interconnected developer stack.
The trend: Voice assistant platforms are shifting from standalone skills toward composable, interconnected developer services, with Amazon generalizing its Alexa APIs category by category.