Blanchard's Coffee — Voice Ordering via Alexa

An Alexa skill that lets me order coffee from Blanchard's Coffee using just my voice. The catch — Blanchard's doesn't have a public API, so the entire order flow is driven by browser automation.

Built in about a week in early March 2026 using Claude Code as my AI engineering partner. This was my first Claude Code project. Claude handled the Playwright configuration, AWS infrastructure deployment, and Alexa skill creation and iteration.

GitHub: blanchards-alexa

How It Works

1. "Alexa, order my coffee" — I tell Alexa what I want (e.g., "one iced latte and one iced latte extra sweet")
2. Playwright takes over — A Lambda function spins up headless Chromium, navigates to Blanchard's Square ordering page, selects items, customizes them, and fills in payment details
3. Confirmation email — Before submitting, the skill sends me an email via Amazon SES showing what Alexa heard, what will be ordered, the total (including tip), and a screenshot of the checkout page
4. Approve or reject — I click Confirm or Cancel in the email. If I don't respond, the order auto-cancels in 12 minutes
5. Pick up coffee — Drive to Blanchard's, grab the order

Tech Stack

• Runtime: Python, AWS Lambda
• Automation: Playwright (headless Chromium)
• Voice: Alexa Skills Kit (ASK)
• Notifications: Amazon SES (confirmation emails with approve/reject links)
• Infrastructure: AWS Lambda, API Gateway, SES, all deployed via Claude Code

Challenges

The biggest pain point was Playwright in Lambda. Headless Chromium has a large binary footprint and slow cold starts, which clashes with Alexa's response time constraints. Getting the Lambda layer configured with the right Chromium build, managing timeouts, and keeping the browser session stable through a multi-step checkout flow took the most work.

Alexa intent parsing was the other challenge — getting the skill to reliably parse natural drink orders (sizes, customizations, quantities) into structured data that maps to Blanchard's menu items required careful slot design and validation logic.

Status

Working on my personal devices as a private Alexa skill. I use it regularly to order from Blanchard's — the photos above are from a real order placed entirely by voice.