Alexa Utterance Generator

Use this tool if you'd like to generate hundreds and thousands of variant utterances for your Alexa skills.

How to

Create a new txt-file in /src/main/resources/utterances and start writing down generic utterances. The magic comes with using placeholders in curly brackets. You need to set the chosen filename as a key in the UtteranceGenerator code-file or hand it in as a parameter when running this application from cli.

Value placeholders

help me {get|book} a {taxi|room|table}

results in six utterances (help me get a taxi, help me book a room etc.)

Resource placeholders

If you have a lot of values for your placeholders it's worth maintaining them in a file. Create one to many new txt-files in src/main/resources/placeholders and use the chosen file-name as the placeholder-name. If the name cannot be resolved to a placeholder-file the script treats it as a value placeholder.

Assume you created a file named "city.txt" that contains

Boston
Berlin
Bristol

an utterance like

help me {get|book} a {taxi|room|table} in {city}

results in 18 variants (help me get a taxi in Boston, help me book a room in Berlin etc.)

Value ranges

The generator is also able to resolve numeric ranges defined in placeholders.

help me {get|book} a {taxi|room|table} in {city} at {1-12} {AM|PM}

Blank values

It's worth mentioning that blank values in value placeholders are supported.

{|please} help me {get|book} a {taxi|room|table} in {city} at {1-12} {AM|PM}

results in 864 variants (help me get a taxi in Boston at 1 AM, please help me get a taxi in Boston at 1 AM etc.)

Escape placeholders

Placeholders follow the same syntax as slots in regular utterances. You might want to keep a {slot} in generated utterances without having it resolved by this script.

{|please} help me {get|book} a {taxi|room|table} in {{city}} at {1-12} {AM|PM}

returns utterances like "help me get a taxi in {city} at 1 AM".

Deduplication

Don't care about duplicated utterances in your output. The generator will eliminate them in case you define overlapping patterns.