Hello Christian, I have been a VoiceMonkey user since the early days of the skill and was among the first people experimenting with it when it appeared. Over time it became one of the most powerful extensions of the Alexa ecosystem. VoiceMonkey enables automation patterns that the native Alexa platform alone does not easily support, particularly trigger-based workflows, orchestration between systems, and integrations with external services. In the early years, support interactions — including yours — were responsive and technically helpful, which created strong confidence in the project and its long-term potential. Over the last couple of years, however, development appears to have slowed considerably. I understand the Alexa ecosystem itself has undergone major changes, especially with the introduction of Alexa Plus. From a systems perspective, Alexa Plus represents a significant architectural evolution: stronger natural-language processing, contextual memory, improved orchestration of devices and tasks, and more dynamic automation capabilities. Many of these areas overlap with scenarios where VoiceMonkey historically added substantial value, so it would be understandable if development paused strategically while this new Alexa architecture matured. The difficulty is the long period without communication. Around two years ago it was mentioned that a major new version of VoiceMonkey was expected around the middle of last year. Many users waited for that release with interest, but it never appeared, and since then there has been little indication of the project’s current direction. This uncertainty is especially relevant for long-time paying users. In my case, I have maintained a subscription almost continuously since the skill launched because VoiceMonkey remains a central component of my Alexa automation environment. One long-standing request I raised through support relates to RSS language support. At the moment RSS functionality appears optimized for English phonetics. When feeds contain Spanish or Portuguese, pronunciation often fails because accented characters and language-specific phonetic rules are not interpreted correctly. Accented vowels are frequently ignored when Alexa reads the text aloud, which limits the usefulness of the RSS feature for international users. Another concern involves flow stability. Some automations that previously worked reliably now fail intermittently, likely as Alexa’s backend continues evolving. Integrations like VoiceMonkey typically require periodic adjustments to remain stable within a changing platform. There is also a recurring issue related to prompt loops within flows. In certain situations a flow can repeatedly emit the same question without stopping, creating a continuous prompt cycle. When this happens, Alexa appears to terminate the skill session automatically, most likely as a safeguard to prevent runaway invocation loops within the voice interaction system. The core issue in these cases is not the device itself but the uncontrolled repetition of prompts generated by the flow. This behavior has persisted for quite some time and does not appear to have been mitigated within the skill. Despite these concerns, I continue supporting VoiceMonkey because it remains one of the most capable tools available for extending Alexa automation. What many users would appreciate now is clarity. If development is active and a major update is coming, that would be excellent news. If the project is approaching the end of its lifecycle, transparency would allow users to plan accordingly. Could you please share an update on the current status of VoiceMonkey, and whether a major update is still planned? Thank you. — A long-time VoiceMonkey subscriber
