I’ve long been a devotee of the Getting Things Done book and the methods it espouses. I can’t claim to implement it perfectly, but it does help a lot.

One of the key planks in my own implementation of GTD has always been to capture items using Amazon Alexa. I have several of them around the house, and even one in the car (although its reliability is so bad I’ve been thinking of throwing it out of the window on the Oxford ring road next time it doesn’t behave).

Being able to say “Alexa, add (insert item here) to my to do list” and have the Alexa to do list copied automatically onto my GTD board in Trello was a boon, because it made adding things to the list so low-friction that everything went on the list, and I stopped trying to carry lists in my head.

I can’t even remember exactly how the Trello - Alexa integration worked, but work it did for many years, right up until … trying to actually do some (non-work) thinks off the list this afternoon, half a dozen items I added yesterday weren’t there.

It looks like Amazon have pulled the plug on some APIs and accessing the Alexa to do list from code is no longer possible.

Cheers Amazon. Flippin’ cheers.

Of course, some might be shouting at the screen that I pay no money for the Alexa ecosystem, and apart from the initial outlay on the hardware, that’s true enough. If they want me to chuck them in a skip and invest in something else, Amazon are going the right way about it.

EDIT: A bit of a lash-up involving the Memo Mail Skill and some email redirection to Trello has restored service for me, although the new phrase (“start Memo Mail and send me the text xxx”) is clunky compared to “add xxx to my to do list”.