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 the OVOS reference implementation, and implementer-facing reference material that does not belong in a normative specification body. Nothing here is binding — the normative documents are the specifications listed in the README spec registry.
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.
The appendix is organized 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 the reference implementation — divergences, renames, topic mapping |
| appendix/reference.md | §6 | Implementer reference — session-field cheat-sheet, stamp rules, introspection patterns |
| appendix/gaps.md | §7 | Known gaps — deferred specs, tooling, corpora |
| appendix/persona-flow.md | §8 | Persona lifecycle — annotated bus sequences for summon, conversation, dismiss, and out-of-band query |