ASK Toolkit for Visual Studio Code is an extension that that makes it easier to develop and deploy Alexa Skills. You can use the ASK toolkit to call the ASK command line interface (CLI) from within VS Code, and can see the results in VS Code's integrated terminal. This allows you to perform nearly all skill development actions within VS Code. Using the ASK toolkit, you can:

• Discover ASK commands by typing “ASK” from the VS Code command palette
• Create a skill using templates
• Generate code snippets for built-in intents, custom intents, slots, and request handlers
• Identify errors in your JSON schema
• Hover over a JSON object to see documentation
• Submit a skill for certification

See the getting started documentation

ASK toolkit requires you to install and initialize the ASK CLI v1.

1. Download and configure ASK CLI v1(recommend version 1.7.23). For more information, watch the video and see the documentation for configuring your AWS credentials.

2. To use the Alexa templates, download Git and install it.

3. (Optional and recommended) Use AWS Lambda to host the backend business logic for your skill. Watch the video and see the documentation for configuring your AWS credentials.