Before You Get Started

Must-have

• An Amazon Developer Account (steps provided in the previous lesson).
• Some experience playing around with the Alexa Console, such as by following the steps located here.
• A basic understanding of how the web works. Things like JSON, HTTP, etc., should be familiar to you.
• Basic programming knowledge. Although we will be using JavaScript, the code should not be too hard to understand if you know other languages like Java or Python.

Good-to-have

• An AWS account (free tier).
• A basic understanding of Node.js and AWS (Lambda, DynamoDB, CloudWatch, S3, etc.) is useful, but not mandatory.
• An Amazon Echo device connected to the email used for the Alexa Developer Console (useful for testing directly on the device).