Design Guide: Introduction
Add-ons enable you to integrate your products and services directly into Alexa+. Customers interact with add-ons through inline components, fullscreen views, and voice responses that integrate into the Alexa+ interface.
Alexa+ supports two integration paths:
- MCP add-ons let you deploy your own UI directly into the Alexa+ interface. You build and ship the experience, and Alexa renders it. See MCP toolkit.
- Integration with Alexa categories brings your API-based or MCP-based experience directly into an existing Alexa+ category. This path requires working with a Solutions Architect. See Category SDK: Action add-on.
Learn more in Choose the Proper Alexa+ Integration Approach.
How customers reach you
By default, customers activate your add-on through direct named invocation. For example, a customer might say "Alexa, open <invocation name>" or "Alexa, book me a hotel next week in Portland with <invocation name>." When multiple add-ons can fulfill a request, Alexa prompts the customer to choose.
What Alexa handles
- Routing the customer's request; helping the customer choose which add-on to use when more than one is relevant to their request.
- Alexa's verbal responses.
- Conversation continuity, including resuming after interruptions.
- When your MCP doesn't return a UI response, Alexa handles rendering of data-only responses through Alexa's native interface.
- Voice-only delivery on devices without a screen.
What you control
- Your tool logic and the data you return.
- Your UI payload, when you choose to provide one.
- Brand expression within the Alexa design system.
- UI to enter and exit fullscreen mode.
How your experience renders
If you provide a UI payload, Alexa renders it on the device. If you return data only, Alexa renders it through Alexa native components or as a voice-only response, so your data appears in a CX that's consistent with Alexa+. Learn more in Layout and Rendering.
What makes a great experience on Alexa?
An add-on should do at least one thing better because it lives in Alexa+. Customers come to Alexa for multi-modal task completion in the spaces where they live and work, often when their attention is divided: kitchens, living rooms, cars, and on the go. A great add-on meets them in that context, not by porting a screen-first product into a voice-first surface, but by extracting the moments where Alexa can deliver a faster, simpler, or more natural outcome than any other channel.
Four principles define a great add-on experience
1. End-to-end task completion
Customers come to Alexa to finish something, not to start a journey they'll complete elsewhere. A great add-on resolves the customer's intent within the conversation, surfacing only the inputs Alexa needs to act and confirming the outcome clearly. If your service typically takes ten taps and three screens, identify the two or three steps that actually need the customer's input, and let Alexa handle the rest.
2. Simple, glanceable metadata
Alexa surfaces are read at a distance, often in motion, and frequently with divided attention. Show only the information the customer needs to make the next decision. One title, one or two supporting fields, one clear action. Strip the rest. Density that reads well on a phone reads as noise on an Echo Show across the room. Simple data also improves the quality of the information Alexa will read out.
3. Text optimized for far-field and ambient reading
Customers read Alexa screens from across the room, while cooking, while walking past, while doing something else. Use the 1.6 typography scaling ratio described in Visual foundations. Favor short, declarative copy over long descriptions. Write labels and button text that hold up when scanned in under a second. If a customer has to lean in to read it, it's too small or too dense.
4. Coherency with the Alexa design language
There are a number of ways your add-on can feel like a natural part of Alexa+, rather than a foreign object embedded in it. Designs for mobile and web often don't translate well on Alexa devices. You may need to adapt tokens, spacing, and component patterns using the recommendations in the Token Reference to achieve a delightful experience. Use brand expression where it earns its place: accents, badges, primary actions. Let Alexa's visual system handle the rest. Learn more about branding affordances in Brand Expression.
Related topics
| Go back to: MCP Add-on Design Guide | Next: The Conversation Surface |
Last updated: Jul 21, 2026
