Progressive response

What is a "Progressive Response" ?

Your skill can send progressive responses to keep the user engaged while your skill prepares a full response to the user's request. A progressive response is interstitial SSML content (including text-to-speech and short audio) that Alexa plays while waiting for your full skill response.
via: https://developer.amazon.com/docs/custom-skills/send-the-user-a-progressive-response.html

Example

const { enqueueProgressiveResponseDirective } = require('ask-utils') 
const GetFirstEventHandler = {
  canHandle (handlerInput) {
    const request = handlerInput.requestEnvelope.request
    return request.type === 'IntentRequest' && request.intent.name === 'GetFirstEventIntent'
  },
  async handle (handlerInput) {
    try {
      await enqueueProgressiveResponseDirective(handlerInput, 'Please wait for a while')
    } catch (err) {
      // if it failed we can continue, just the user will wait longer for first response
      console.log(err)
    }
    // call some api
    const content = await get()
    return responseBuilder
        .speak(content)
        .getResponse()
  }
}