Is it possible to restrict Alexa or an AVS device to a custom skill?

Question

Is it possible to restrict and AVS device (a device running Alexa) to a single skill? So if I built an AI skill and have it running on a device, is it possible to keep the experience inside the custom skill so I don't have to keep saying Alexa, open

Answer 1

One trick you can do with AVS is to prepend every single request with a sound clip equivalent to: "ask to ..." It's definitely a hack, but I was able to use it with some success.

See my write-up here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/adding-context-alexa-will-blaschko-ma

The relevant parts (in case the link goes away).

Regular voice commands don't carry my extra information about the user, but I wanted to find a way to tack on metadata to the voice commands, and so I did just that--glued it right onto the end of the command and updated my intents to know what the new structure would be.

...

In addition to facial recognition, voice recognition could help identify users, but let's not stop there. Any amount of context can be added to a request based on available local data.

“Find frozen yogurt nearby" could silently become “Alexa open Yelp and find frozen yogurt near 1st and Pine, Seattle” using some built in geolocation in the device (phone, in this case).

I also use something similar in my open source Android Alexa library to send prerecorded commands: https://github.com/willblaschko/AlexaAndroid

Answer 2

I think you are looking for AWS Lex which allows you to write Alexa like skills without the rest of Alexa feature set.

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/lex/latest/dg/what-is.html