Terms defined across the OVOS specifications, with where each is defined. This document is non-normative — each term's authoritative definition lives in the spec section linked from its entry. The glossary exists so a reader who encounters a term in one spec can find where it was introduced without grepping the whole repository.
If a term used in a spec is missing here, that's a bug — please open a PR adding it.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Template | A string in the OVOS-INTENT-1 grammar describing a set of sentences (INTENT-1 §3). |
| Expansion | Resolving (a|b) / [x] into a finite set of concrete sentences (INTENT-1 §4). |
| Sample / sample set | A concrete sentence produced by expansion; the set of all of them for a template (INTENT-1 §4). |
| Slot | A named placeholder {name} filled with a value rather than written out (INTENT-1 §3.4, §5). |
| Capture map | The names→values mapping a match produces — slot names or vocabulary names as keys (INTENT-3 §7). |
| Resource file / role | A skill's plain-text files: .intent, .dialog, .entity, .voc, .blacklist (INTENT-2 §1). |
| Vocabulary | A named slot-free phrase set; the unit a keyword intent constrains over (INTENT-3 §4.1). |
| Occurrence | A phrase appearing in an utterance as a contiguous whole-word subsequence (INTENT-2 §4.3, INTENT-3 §4.1). |
| Skill | An app — a self-contained unit of assistant functionality (INTENT-3 §1, §3). |
| Skill id | A skill's identifier, unique across the assistant (INTENT-3 §3). |
| Intent | A developer-defined binding from a natural-language command to one handler (INTENT-3 §1). |
| Intent name / qualified name | The intent's name, unique within its skill / the skill_id:intent_name pair (INTENT-3 §3). |
| Keyword intent / template intent | The two definition methods — keyword constraints, or sentence templates (INTENT-3 §2). |
| Handler | The code an intent triggers when its command is recognized (INTENT-3 §1, §6). |
| Intent engine | A classifier + slot extractor: consumes definitions, identifies the triggered intent (INTENT-3 §6.2). |
| Orchestrator | The component that coordinates intent matching and dispatch — owns the engines / pipeline plugins and routes match results to handlers (INTENT-3 §6.1). Distinct from the messagebus (transport) and from individual engines / plugins. |
| Registration | Submitting an intent's definition and handler together, as one unit (INTENT-3 §6.1). |
| Message | The unit of communication on the bus: a JSON object with type, data, context (MSG-1 §2). |
| Context | The assistant-metadata object on a Message; an extensible JSON object whose keys are defined by companion specs (MSG-1 §2.3). |
| Session | The per-conversation carrier in context.session; carries session_id (with "default" reserved for "originates from the device itself") and lang (the user's preferred language, distinct from any data.lang describing the payload's own language) (MSG-1 §4). |