How To Build Your Own Action For Google Home Using API.AI – Smashing Magazine

For the holidays, the owner of (and my boss at) thirteen23 gave each employee a Google Home device. If you don't already know, Google Home1 is a voice-activated speaker powered by Google Assistant2 and is a competing product to Amazon's line of Alexa products3. I already have the Amazon Echo, and as Director of Technology at thirteen23, I love tinkering with software for new products. For the Amazon Echo, you can create what are called "skills", which allow you to build custom interactions when speaking to the device. I've really enjoyed learning how to build my own skills for Alexa4. Now that Google Home is out in the market, Google has its own platform for you to build custom interactions, similar to skills, called "actions5".