[michaelt]

  It very much appears that instead of being able to infer
  what you mean, Alexa mostly just matches extremely
  specific strings to extremely specific corresponding
  processes. Understandable as a developer, extremely
  frustrating as a user.

I think getting this right, and especially getting it right while allowing third-party skills and preserving user privacy, is probably very difficult.

If someone says "Alexa, we need more bread" how do you figure out which skill to delegate that to when the 'amazon', 'ebay', 'ocado', and 'asda' skills all report they can order products matching that query, the 'music' and 'video' skills report they can stream content matching that query, and the 'grocery list' skill reports it can add that to a grocery list?

If I say that, what I really mean is "Look at Ocado and Asda, if I have a delivery coming in the near future add my most-ordered full size loaf of bread to the order if it's not already present, otherwise add it to my grocery list and remind me when I'm leaving work tomorrow"

And that behaviour is bread-specific. If I'm ordering beer I want different behaviour - and if I'm ordering something personal, maybe I don't want my search broadcast to every retailer just to check if they can help with it.

[icebraining]

The full behaviour may be a bit too much for now, but deciding which to use seems simple: it's how Android Intents already work. Apps register themselves for which kinds of actions they can handle, then the user gets asked which one to use, and can set a default.

> Alexa, we need more bread

< Should I order it through Ocado, Asda, Ebay or Amazon?

> Always use Asda for bread ("unless I tell you otherwise" is implied)