Spec proposal: OVOS-COMMON-QUERY-1 — Common Query Pipeline Plugin

Proposal for OVOS-COMMON-QUERY-1, the common query pipeline plugin specification.

Problem

Voice assistants need a standardised scatter-gather mechanism for open-domain question answering: broadcast a question to registered skills, collect answers within a bounded window, select the best, and dispatch the winner to speak it. The current implementation predates any specification.

Proposal

• Question gate — binary accept/reject pre-filter before broadcast
• Scatter-gather — ovos.common_query.question broadcast; timed collection with early termination and searching extension protocol; confidence-based selection
• Pure-matcher pattern — Match.skill_id is the winning skill, never the plugin's own pipeline_id; dispatch is <winning_skill_id>:common_query.question via PIPELINE-1 §7
• common_query.question is skill-owned — skills register it via INTENT-4 normally; it is NOT a reserved intent name
• Discovery — ovos.common_query.ping / ovos.common_query.pong per PIPELINE-1 §10 pattern
• Answer-type metadata — advisory COSC labels for routing/display

PR

PR #40

Start with PR #40 and compare it with the referenced PIPELINE-1 §7/§10 and INTENT-4 rules; the issue provides no implementation files or tests. Done means reaching a decided, internally consistent OVOS-COMMON-QUERY-1 specification covering the listed protocols and ownership rules.