The intent_request is the incoming "request" or "event" from Lex to your Lambda Function. It holds all the necessary information about the user's input and your Lex bot's processing of that input (trigger certain intent, fill certain slots, confirmations, etc.)
This should be the documentation you are looking for.
Lambda Function Input Event and Response Format:
This section describes the structure of the event data that Amazon Lex provides to a Lambda function. Use this information to parse the input in your Lambda code. It also explains the format of the response that Amazon Lex expects your Lambda function to return.
And here is the Event/Request format:
{
"currentIntent": {
"name": "intent-name",
"slots": {
"slot name": "value",
"slot name": "value"
},
"slotDetails": {
"slot name": {
"resolutions" : [
{ "value": "resolved value" },
{ "value": "resolved value" }
],
"originalValue": "original text"
},
"slot name": {
"resolutions" : [
{ "value": "resolved value" },
{ "value": "resolved value" }
],
"originalValue": "original text"
}
},
"confirmationStatus": "None, Confirmed, or Denied (intent confirmation, if configured)"
},
"bot": {
"name": "bot name",
"alias": "bot alias",
"version": "bot version"
},
"userId": "User ID specified in the POST request to Amazon Lex.",
"inputTranscript": "Text used to process the request",
"invocationSource": "FulfillmentCodeHook or DialogCodeHook",
"outputDialogMode": "Text or Voice, based on ContentType request header in runtime API request",
"messageVersion": "1.0",
"sessionAttributes": {
"key": "value",
"key": "value"
},
"requestAttributes": {
"key": "value",
"key": "value"
}
}
The slots data is found inside currentIntent and that is inside of this whole intent_request object. That is why you are seeing the code: intent_request['currentIntent']['slots']
So to get session attributes you can find them here: intent_request['sessionAttributes']
Also extremely useful is the exact user input text:
intent_request['inputTranscript']