Thank You Note

Inspiration

My wife was writing thank you notes a few weeks ago and I recalled all the struggles (e.g. Googling) I've had with writing a thank you note. My heart is in the right place but the words don't always come to me. This skill is going to take the stress out of (and maybe save me a little bit of time when) writing thank you notes.

What it does

Simple. It asks for the name of the thank you note recipient, what gift they gave you, what awesome party you threw to end up being the proud new owner of that give, and it gives you the opportunity to say something you love about the gift.

With a little bit of algorithmic magic, the skill outputs a succinct note for you to write down on that handwritten thank you note (which shows all that more TLC for that person).

Alexa gets really excited to tell users their amazing new thank you note though, so I've set up the skill to read the note to you one line at a time. If you missed the line, you can ask Alexa to repeat it or even go back or forward a line. Once you're done, you can start over fresh and you're just a few seconds away from your next thank you note!

Of course the note will also display within your Alexa app or on the screen of your Alexa Show or your other Alexa enabled devices.

How I built it

Python, lots and lots of testing, and a devotion to a great skill. It's backend is 100% AWS backend.

Challenges I ran into

I'm always struggling between should I make it have more features or be simpler. I've tried to strike a balance here with keeping the inputs few but just enough to make the thank you note personal. The controls for the user to seek through the note are hopefully straightforward.