Non-normative. This document is a companion to the OVOS formal specifications. It records design rationale, comparisons with other systems, the catalogue of deliberate divergences from current OVOS code, and implementer-facing reference material that does not belong in a normative specification body. Nothing here is binding — the normative documents are OVOS-INTENT-1, OVOS-INTENT-2, OVOS-INTENT-3, OVOS-INTENT-4, OVOS-MSG-1, OVOS-SESSION-1, OVOS-PIPELINE-1, OVOS-CONTEXT-1, OVOS-CONVERSE-1, OVOS-STOP-1, OVOS-COMMON-QUERY-1, and OVOS-TRANSFORM-1.
Pointers to specific OVOS code (file paths, class names, function names) and to specific real projects (HiveMind, Adapt, padatious, ovos-audio, ovos-workshop, …) are deliberately kept out of the spec bodies and collected here, because implementation code moves and specifications must not.
⚠️ AI-generated draft — not yet fully reviewed. The appendix content was produced by a large language model (Claude Code) and has not yet been fully reviewed for accuracy, completeness, or consistency with the specifications. The normative specifications themselves are human-reviewed; this appendix is supplementary context. Readers should verify claims before relying on them.
The appendix content has been split into topic-specific files:
| File | Section | Topic |
|---|---|---|
| appendix/overview.md | §1 | About the OVOS specifications — voice OS concept, formalization, stack taxonomy, compatibility, reference implementations |
| appendix/comparisons.md | §2 | Comparison with other voice-assistant systems — HA/Rhasspy, Rasa, ASK/Dialogflow, summary |
| appendix/patterns.md | §3 | Architectural patterns — bus substrate, pipeline-plugin model, interop with external protocols |
| appendix/rationale.md | §4 | Design rationale, per specification — why each spec makes its choices |
| appendix/divergences.md | §5 | Where the specs differ from current OVOS code — divergences, renames, topic mapping |
| appendix/reference.md | §6 | Implementer reference — session-field cheat-sheet, stamp rules, introspection patterns |
| appendix/gaps.md | §7 | Known gaps and planned work — deferred specs, tooling, corpora |