@levelsio Builds His Own Alexa Jukebox With Claude Code

@levelsio wanted coffee jazz. Alexa wanted a subscription.

The problem, as he put it on Tuesday morning: Alexa forces him to get Spotify or Amazon Music, “the music kinda sucks,” and he just needs basic coffee jazz. He asked whether a HomePod would play “coffee_jazz.mp3” on request.

Then he answered his own “inb4”: “just hack your Alexa Echo and vibecode it.” His verdict: “Actually good idea, let’s try.”

Under an hour later, Claude Code was building the skill.

“Okay I think it works,” he posted. “It’s building an Alexa skill now that can play music from my own server on the Alexa Echo without Spotify or Amazon Music.”

“It worked. Of course it worked,” he wrote. The Jukebox also has Bossa Nova and Lofi, and he can drop music in whenever he wants and it plays it.

One fewer subscription.

Spotify on Alexa had been giving him “really terrible recommendations,” always the same, and this was the only thing he used it for. “So I guess I can cancel Spotify now too.”

In a postscript, he says he had also bought and tried another option, and it was “so bad.” “The speakers sounds like a Gameboy from 1992,” he wrote, and “nothing worked.” He loves @home_assistant, he says, “but this was underwhelming.”