Fully configured alexa smart home but now looking into intents

I have successfully configured alexa smart home. I did it on (external) port 8123, not on 443 but confirmed it is working even after reboots. Specifically, I used Amazon login services and changed three lines of Matt2005 code to ONLY use the LLAT (commented out the other choices).

So then I thought I would look into intents. I know the first hurdle is to link and discover with intents enabled so I turned on the “Send Alexa events” switch on the skill. Still linked and discovered all entities (yes, still on port 8123!). Sounds promising, but…

Now I have two big questions:

  1. I tried adding a custom model to my skill (including adding a trigger to my lambda) but I really don’t know what I’m doing (just following bits of many posts) and I failed to link after that. Was I supposed to “build” the custom model?

  2. why would I want intents? Other than customizing alexa’s responses, it looks like I can do everything in scripts. I suspect I can even get the echo to play any TTS I want with only smart home (can I?). If that is so, why would I want to do some of my work in alexa and some in HA?

I’ve see a few people who have Alexa Home Skills working on 8123 but haven’t seen anyone who has it working with intents. I’m optimistic I can because it works when I enable “send alexa events”. If intents are of use AND I can get them working on 8123, I will gladly post my results for many others who wanted that same setup.

Hmm. Got it to link on 8123 but I still don’t understand intents. ALL examples are really bad about where they go and under what key. Many are files called intents.yaml or alexa.yaml but I can’t tell where they were loaded (i.e. as the value of an “alexa:” key???, at the root of configuration.yaml??? Can’t tell.

Can someone tell me

  1. why do I want intents now that we have smart home
  2. given that we want intents, how do I do the yaml part of it? Do I need the “intents:” key in the root of configuration.yaml? Do I use the “intent:” key before each intent? What are the keys and values?

I figured out that there are three alexa configurations:

  1. Custom Skills
    Need to configure in Alexa and in HA
    Need to use the “Ask Home Assistant” (or similar) prompt
    Can be very interactive (ask “what light” etc.)
    Can combine data from mny entities, scripts etc.

  2. Alexa Smart Home
    Don’t need a prompt (except “Alexa”
    Only reads, sets or runs a single thing (e.g. sensor, script etc.)
    Doesn’t support most sensors

  3. Alexa Smart Home with Send Alexa Events enabled
    This is the one above with most sensors supported (e.g. temperature, doors etc.)

I have successfully done number 3 using port 8123. Seems to work like a charm!!! I’m sure I can do number 2 but right now I question whether I want it. To do it I will have to make a second lambda function (or make edits to the first) and add a custom model to my skill. Doesn’t look all that hard.

Bottom line, two days of learning and I now have a much better understanding of the skills, the lambda function, the linking and the HA end of it. Now I will look into intents (case 1.)