A Skill Other Than the One You Expect Is Launched

There are no uniqueness constraints placed on a skill’s invocation name. Therefore, it’s very possible that there are other skills published that have the same invocation name as your skill. Unless you explicitly choose a particular skill and associate it with your account, Alexa will choose a random skill that matches the given invocation name.

When you deploy a skill for development purposes, it will automatically be associated with your account as long as you’ve not already associated a different skill with the same invocation name to your account.

This is a very common problem with “Hello World” skills. Let’s say that you have just developed your very first skill with an invocation name of “Hello World” and then deploy it so that you can try it out. But suppose that there was an error deploying the skill and you didn’t notice it before you said “Alexa, open Hello World.” In that case, your skill has not been deployed and so Alexa chooses another skill with “Hello World” as the invocation name.

What’s worse, though, is even after you realize your mistake and successfully deploy your skill, the other “Hello World” will still be the one that launches. It can be infuriating.

The way to fix this is to go into the companion application, find the wrong skill, and disable it. Then, the next time you launch your skill, Alexa should find your skill and not another one that happens to have the same invocation name.