Alexa Skills
Tanay The Trainer:
Creating a Personalized Alexa Fitness Skill Using Skill Blueprints
About the Project
"Tanay The Trainer" is a custom Alexa Skill designed using Amazon's Skill Blueprints. It acts as a personal fitness assistant that delivers a quick, randomized workout session whenever prompted. Users can activate it simply by saying commands like “Alexa, start my workout,” and receive a customized workout plan. The skill is currently set to private ("Just Me" visibility) for personal use and testing.
Goals
-
Create a Personalized Fitness Experience: Build an Alexa skill tailored to deliver fast and flexible workouts without needing an external app.
-
Practice Voice Skill Development: Gain hands-on experience with creating voice-based AI interactions using Alexa Skill Blueprints.
-
Enhance Daily Motivation: Make fitness fun and accessible through voice commands, encouraging consistency in daily workouts.
-
Test Private Skill Deployment: Successfully create, run, and debug a private Alexa skill before considering public release.
Development Steps
-
Choosing the Blue Print
-
Selected the “Personal Trainer” template in Alexa Skill Blueprints, which allows designing a customizable workout assistant.
-
-
Skills Customization
-
Renamed the skill from "Personal Trainer" to "Tanay The Trainer" for a personalized touch.
-
Set the workout content including exercises, duration, and voice prompts (example: High Knees, 14 minutes and 15 seconds total).
-
Customized prompts users hear at the start of the workout.
-
-
Publishing for private use
-
Initially published the skill privately under “Just Me” settings to test it.
-
Practiced invoking the skill using different trigger phrases:
-
"Alexa, start my workout".
-
"Alexa, tell me about today’s workout".
-
"Alexa, open Tanay the Trainer".
-
-
Testing and Debugging
-
Successfully launched the workout prompts through the Alexa app.
-
Encountered an audio connection error:
"I am having trouble connecting to the audio file U.R.I." -
Identified the issue related to Alexa's handling of certain audio files or sound elements, but the workout flow continued successfully without blocking interaction
-
Project Images
Conclusion
Building "Tanay The Trainer" helped achieve a personalized fitness assistant experience through Amazon Alexa. The project provided valuable insights into how voice skills are created, customized, and tested. Although there was a minor technical hiccup with connecting to audio files, the skill's core functionality worked as expected, delivering an engaging, voice-driven workout session. This exercise opened opportunities for future improvements, such as adding custom sounds, longer workouts, and eventually publishing the skill to the Alexa Skills Store for public use.