Spec proposal: OVOS-PERSONA-1 — Persona Pipeline Plugin

Proposal for OVOS-PERSONA-1, the persona pipeline plugin specification.

Problem

Personas — complete conversational agents that replace the deterministic pipeline when active — have no normative contract. Summon/dismiss mechanics, the persona_id session field, pipeline positioning, multi-persona coexistence, and the out-of-band query interface are all implementation-defined.

Proposal

Defines the full persona plugin contract:

• persona_id session field — identifies the active persona for a session; absent = no-persona mode (deterministic pipeline only)
• Summon/dismiss — self-summon via Match.updated_session during match; external summon via session field; dismiss via explicit session mutation
• Match contract — two-phase: embedded persona command detection (always active) then utterance claim when persona is active
• Handler contract — standard PIPELINE-1 dispatch; multi-turn via CONVERSE-1; session.fallback_pipeline_id for per-persona fallback chains
• Out-of-band query — ovos.persona.query / ovos.persona.answer for direct text-in/text-out queries bypassing the pipeline
• Multiple persona coexistence — each plugin instance declares supported persona_ids; at most one persona active per session at a time
• Pipeline positioning — after deterministic intents and converse, before fallback

PR

PR #37

Start by reviewing the proposal and PR #37, then use the listed contract areas as a checklist: session fields, summon/dismiss, matching, handlers, queries, coexistence, and pipeline positioning. Done means the persona plugin specification is resolved and its complete contract is represented in the architecture project.