I want to create a simple skill which uses alexa's voice to text translation and then passes the text to a different service. This seems close to what i am looking for: https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-skills-kit/docs/alexa-skills-kit-interface-reference, but nowhere in the example request/response does it have the text form of the users request to alexa. Has someone managed to extract the text data of user voice commands, would be very helpful for me.
It is not easy, unfortunately and by design.
User responses are stored in word 'slots' in the interaction model. This is how Alexa parses speech and execute commands based on user utterances. Without knowing every variation of a possible word slot and writing this into your interaction model, you won't be able to store free form text in a variable and 'pass it on'.