OVOS Messagebus Chat Plugin

An OVOS ChatEngine agent plugin that proxies user turns through a connected OpenVoiceOS messagebus. Each continue_chat call sends the latest user utterance to the OVOS pipeline and collects the synthesized response.

The plugin reuses the SessionManager-owned Session for each session_id. This keeps OVOS-side state across multi-turn conversations: active skills, entity context, response-mode flags, and language. Skills that rely on MycroftSkill.get_response(), common_query disambiguation, or context-managed intents keep working across turns.

Installation

pip install ovos-messagebus-chat-plugin

Usage

Via plugin discovery

The plugin registers under opm.agents.chat with name ovos-messagebus. Any OVOS component that loads chat-agent plugins (e.g. ovos-persona) will pick it up automatically:

from ovos_plugin_manager.agents import load_chat_agent_plugin

agent_cls = load_chat_agent_plugin("ovos-messagebus")
agent = agent_cls(config={"autoconnect": True, "host": "127.0.0.1", "port": 8181})

Direct programmatic use

from ovos_bus_client import MessageBusClient
from ovos_messagebus_chat_plugin import OVOSMessagebusChatAgent
from ovos_plugin_manager.templates.agents import AgentMessage, MessageRole

bus = MessageBusClient()
bus.run_in_thread()
bus.connected_event.wait()

agent = OVOSMessagebusChatAgent(bus=bus, config={"timeout": 15})

reply = agent.continue_chat(
    [AgentMessage(role=MessageRole.USER, content="what time is it?")],
    session_id="kitchen",
)
print(reply.content)

# next turn: same session_id reuses the Session, so OVOS skills that need
# follow-up context (get_response, common_query, dialog flow) keep working
reply = agent.continue_chat(
    [
        AgentMessage(role=MessageRole.USER, content="what time is it?"),
        AgentMessage(role=MessageRole.ASSISTANT, content=reply.content),
        AgentMessage(role=MessageRole.USER, content="and tomorrow morning?"),
    ],
    session_id="kitchen",
)

Configuration

Documentation

Full developer docs live in docs/:

• docs/architecture.md: where the plugin fits in the OVOS agent ecosystem and the SessionManager interplay.
• docs/configuration.md: every config key with behaviour notes.
• docs/message_flow.md: end-to-end turn lifecycle, including the cross-turn Session reuse story.
• docs/development.md: local tests, releases.

Related projects

• OpenVoiceOS/ovos-bus-client: owns the SessionManager and Session classes this plugin reuses across turns.
• OpenVoiceOS/ovos-plugin-manager: defines the ChatEngine agent template and the opm.agents.chat entry point this plugin implements.
• OpenVoiceOS/ovos-persona: a chat-agent consumer that loads this plugin through plugin discovery.

License

Apache 2.0. See LICENSE.md.

Credits

Developed by TigreGótico for OpenVoiceOS.

This project was funded through the NGI0 Commons Fund, a fund established by NLnet with financial support from the European Commission's Next Generation Internet programme, under the aegis of DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology under grant agreement No 101135429.