question

Hi John, You can mentally replace 'command' with 'action', or at least I do :) As I understand it - if you're using Open, Launch, Start or Talk To - you can initiate your app without providing an action for it, e.g.: "Launch Awesome App" ...and then have your backend respond with something like: "Go ahead, how can I help?" ...and so the flow starts. But, Ask and Tell phrases must be used along with an action for your app to take, e.g.: "Ask Awesome App to tell me a joke" ...or... "Tell Awesome App to put the kettle on" You cannot say a phrase like: "Ask Awesome App" ...without completing the sentence with an action to invoke. Hope that makes sense :)

I figure that's how it works, James. But, lacking the hardware, I'm uncertain how it works at the protocol level. When Echo starts your app in this mode, do you get a LaunchRequest followed by an IntentRequest, or does it just dive in and send an IntentRequest?

Intent alone. It's mentioned somewhere in the docs and I observed that's how it works.

Ah gotcha. Didn't notice that was the differentiator, makes sense. I'm still finding the launch word phrasing to be a little stilted, wish we had a bit more flexibility in defining the whole phrase or the lead-in wording. It's really the pair of words that is the "launch word" ASK {app name} TO TELL {app name} TO so your stuff always follows "to" The other 4 need "AND" to reliably match too, at least in my experience.

Yes, you've got it. The AND matching in the other app invocation phrases is definitely a must too. It's a little clumsy, but it works - at least for now until maybe they re-jiggle how apps are started to improve the UX. Here's some ideas from R. Labanca on keyword and suffix app invocation that you might find interesting: https://forums.developer.amazon.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=5449&tstart=0