Google is taking this time to announce a few things that they would have normally announced at Google I/O. Today, those developing for Google Assistant are getting a number of new tools to use for development.
First up, Google is going to be bringing AMP web pages to Smart Displays. Allowing users to browse through the news like they would on their smartphones. But since these are using AMP pages, they will load a lot faster. Making the overall experience a lot smoother.
Making building for Google Assistant easier
Google wants to make it easier to build experiences for Assistant easier than ever. So it is announcing a few other tools today as well.
Starting today, Google is releasing Actions Builder. This is a new web-based IDE that will provide a graphical interface to show the entire conversation flow. It will allow you to manage Natural Language Understanding training data and provides advanced debugging tools. It is also fully integrated into the Actions Console, allowing you to build, debug, test, release and analyze your Actions all in a single place.
For those developers that would prefer to work with their own tools, Google has updated the Actions SDK. So for the first time, you an have a file based representation of your action and the ability to use a local IDE. The Actions SDK is going to be accompanied by a command line interface, so you are able to build and manage an action fully in code using your favorite source control and continuous integration tools.
Google says that with these two releases, it is also introducing a new conversation model and improvements to the runtime engine. Which is going to make it easier to design and build conversations and users can get faster and more accurate responses.
Introducing a faster and smarter runtime engine
On top of all of this, Google is also introducing a faster and smarter runtime engine. Which is going to make developing for Assistant even easier.
Google says that under the hood, it made a lot of improvements that users will appreciate. It sped up the Assistant runtime engine, so users are going to get faster responses and a smoother experience. The runtime engine is now smarter, so that your Actions can understand its users better with the same training data. Which is going to make everything much easier for both developers and users with this new runtime engine.