Aura+

Build, Ship, Shape: Amazon Developer Hackathon 2026 Primary Track: Alexa+ (Self-Hosted MCP Server & Simulated Web Experience) Mini-Challenges: AWS Builder & Open Source

What is Aura+?

Aura+ is a self-hosted MCP server and simulated Alexa+ agent that goes beyond traditional single-turn voice skills. Instead of "ask a question, get an answer," Aura+ can plan and execute multi-step tasks across your smart home, remember your preferences across sessions, and render interactive controls directly on screen.

It runs on the open Streamable HTTP transport (MCP Spec 2025-11-25+) and uses AWS Bedrock (Claude 3.5 Sonnet) for reasoning and tool selection. When Bedrock credentials aren't available, it falls back to a built-in intent engine so judges can test everything locally without AWS access.

Related MCP server: Home Assistant MCP Server

Architecture

graph TD
    User(["User Voice / Text Input"]) --> Client["Alexa+ Interface"]

    subgraph Transport["Streamable HTTP Transport"]
        Client <-->|"SSE Stream /sse"| MCP["MCP Server - Express/Node.js"]
        Client <-->|"JSON-RPC 2.0 /messages"| MCP
    end

    subgraph AWS["AWS Cloud"]
        MCP <-->|"Bedrock Runtime SDK"| Bedrock["Amazon Bedrock - Claude 3.5 Sonnet"]
    end

    subgraph Tools["MCP Tools"]
        MCP --> T1["smart_home_control"]
        MCP --> T2["execute_multi_step_routine"]
        MCP --> T3["manage_context_memory"]
        MCP --> T4["render_interactive_card"]
    end

Key Features

MCP Server

• Full Streamable HTTP implementation with SSE (/sse) and JSON-RPC 2.0 (/messages)

• 4 registered tools: device control, multi-step routines, persistent memory, and visual card rendering

• MCP Resources for user profile (alexa://user/profile) and system telemetry (alexa://system/telemetry)

AWS Bedrock Integration

• Uses @aws-sdk/client-bedrock-runtime for autonomous planning and tool calling

• Built-in offline fallback so everything works without AWS credentials

Web Interface (4 Views)

• Orchestrator Console — command bar with voice input, one-click workflow chips, hierarchical agent plan tree, and expandable tool call disclosures showing JSON-RPC arguments and results

• Execution Trace — waterfall visualization of each span (model reasoning, tool execution, SSE broadcast) with a calibrated 0-480ms ruler

• Power Grid & Telemetry — interactive solar/load area chart with crosshair scrubber, Tesla Powerwall 3 battery tank, and multi-zone climate controller

• Device Topology — digital twin matrix showing all connected devices with live state and toggle controls

Audio & Voice

• Web Audio API chimes for wake and success feedback

• Browser SpeechRecognition for voice input

• SpeechSynthesis TTS for Alexa-style spoken responses

Quick Start

Prerequisites: Node.js v18+, npm v9+

git clone https://github.com/Sidopolis/ambient-alexa-mcp.git
cd ambient-alexa-mcp
npm start

Open http://localhost:3000 in your browser.

Run the test suite:

npm test

This runs 11 tests covering tool schema validation, execution engine, and intent parsing.

AWS Bedrock Setup (Optional)

Create server/.env:

AWS_REGION=us-east-1
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=your_access_key
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=your_secret_key
BEDROCK_MODEL_ID=anthropic.claude-3-5-sonnet-20240620-v1:0
PORT=3000

Restart the server. Aura+ detects the credentials and routes queries through Bedrock automatically.

Without this file, the built-in intent engine handles all requests locally.

MCP Tools & Resources

Tools (tools/list & tools/call)

Resources (resources/list & resources/read)

Demo Video Script (3 Minutes)

Friction Log

See FRICTION_LOG.md for documented issues with Streamable HTTP session binding, Bedrock schema normalization, and real-time card state sync. This qualifies for the 10% judging bonus.

License

MIT