Talestreamer makes your Alexa skill sound great by replacing Alexa’s voice (awesome though it is) with rich, multilayered audio that incorporates synthesized speech, human voices, and foreground and background music and sound effects. This document describes how you can start using Talestreamer for your Alexa skill.

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If you are using the Alexa SDK and AWS Lambda (other options), it just takes 4 steps:

  1. Depend on the Talestreamer SDK.
  2. Sign up for Talestreamer.
  3. Get the Talestreamer snippet from the Talestreamer dashboard.
  4. Paste the Talestreamer snippet into your Alexa skill.

As soon as you’re done, your skill will use Talestreamer’s default style. Now you can make your skill sound awesome using Talestreamer.

1. Depend on the Talestreamer SDK

In the directory that contains your skill’s source code, run this:
$ npm install –save talestreamer

You should see something like this:
+ talestreamer@1.0.8
added 28 packages in 4.308s

2. Sign up for Talestreamer

Sign up for Talestreamer. You get a free trial, with no credit card required. Check out Talestreamer pricing for details.

3. Get the Talestreamer snippet from the Talestreamer dashboard

  1. Visit the API tab on the Talestreamer Dashboard
  2. Click “Create Key”
  3. Copy the Alexa snippet.

4. Paste the Talestreamer snippet into your Alexa skill

The Talestreamer snippet goes at the end of the file that defines your AWS Lambda handler function. Usually, that’s index.js.

Other Integration Options

If you aren’t using the Alexa SDK and AWS Lambda, but you are writing your skill in Javascript, you can use the Talestreamer SDK to build your custom integration.

Otherwise, you can call the Talestreamer REST API from your Alexa skill.

Next Steps

Once you’re done integrating Talestreamer with Alexa, you can start making your skill sound more awesome.