Updating Skills From Older OVOS

In a nutshell

This page is for skill maintainers moving a skill forward from an older OVOS install. Entries are in date order: start at the version you are currently running and read forward to your target version. For the Big-ticket migrations (the changes with the widest blast radius, including the ovos-workshop 4.0.0 → 7.0.0 release train), see Updating from Older OVOS.

If you maintain skills

Intent dispatch topics dropped the .intent suffix (2026-08, workshop 9.3.11a2)

Per-intent dispatch topics are now the canonical <skill_id>:<intent_name> — the filename-leaked .intent suffix is gone from the wire. Nothing breaks: the ovos-bus-client 2.8 bridge (and FakeBus in current ovos-utils alphas, for tests) keeps literal .intent listeners working in both directions. New code should compute the topic with ovos_spec_tools.intent_topics.canonical_intent_topic instead of hard-coding either spelling. Details and the either-side-modernizes rule: Bus namespace migration.

Skill-settings file-store rewritten

Skill settings moved to json_database-backed XDG-default storage, replacing the old ad-hoc file kludge, with a one-time auto-migration.

• Migration: rely on the self.settings API. Do not read/write the old non-XDG settings file path directly. Lifecycle:

Phase	Version	Notes
Active	before 3299173
Deprecated but functional	unverified	only a one-time auto-migration is recorded, not a hard cutover date
Dropped	3299173734 (2022-02-02)	(ovos-core 3299173, #11)

Fallback dispatcher no longer bus-driven

converse and fallback dispatch became event-based through dedicated services (ConverseService, the fallback pipeline) instead of being called directly in-process on MycroftSkill instances.

• Migration: implement the converse acknowledge handshake if you drive converse externally (for example a custom orchestrator). Do not assume converse() is polled for skills that never override it. Lifecycle:

Phase	Version	Notes
Active	before 4fff98e
Deprecated but functional	none	architecture change, not a deprecate-then-drop symbol
Dropped	4fff98ecfc (2022-02-02)	landed (ovos-core 4fff98e, #32)

ovos_workshop.skills.decorators.* shim paths removed

The 2022 move of decorators from skills.decorators.* to top-level decorators.* (9ca2018, 2022-06-02) had kept 4-line re-export shims at the old paths. Those shims were deleted with no further compat.

• Migration: from ovos_workshop.skills.decorators.killable import killable_intent → from ovos_workshop.decorators.killable import killable_intent (same pattern for ocp, layers, converse, fallback_handler). Pin a floor version if you need to support both paths at once; see version gates. Lifecycle:

Phase	Version	Notes
Active	before 9ca2018 (2022-06-02)
Deprecated but functional	9ca2018 to pre-1.0.0	shim re-export
Dropped	1.0.0	(ovos-workshop 2d684a1, #235)

mycroft-core MycroftSkill compat shim removed

The metaclass hack that let isinstance(skill, MycroftSkill) succeed for both classic Mycroft skills and OVOS skills, and that auto-initialized classic-style skills, was removed. Skills built for mycroft-core no longer load.

• Migration: subclass ovos_workshop.skills.ovos.OVOSSkill directly, following the skill design guidelines. Skill lifecycle is now entirely SkillLoader-driven: bus/skill_id are passed to __init__, not injected via metaclass into a later initialize() call. Lifecycle:

Phase	Version	Notes
Active	pre-2d684a1
Deprecated but functional	through the V0.0.x era	with warnings
Dropped	1.0.0 (ovos-workshop 2d684a1, #235, 2024-10-15)

The maintainers later bumped VERSION_MAJOR to 8 in 7c8a1e4 (2025-11-09) purely to acknowledge, after the fact, that this should have been versioned as a major bump: treat 2d684a1/1.0.0 as the real boundary.

ovos_workshop.decorators.compat.backwards_compat removed

The backwards_compat(classic_core=, pre_008=, no_core=) decorator, which branched behavior by detecting mycroft.version.CORE_VERSION_STR / ovos_core.version, was deleted along with the mycroft-skill compat shim.

• Migration: remove any use of backwards_compat. Branch on your own feature-detection logic if you still need version-conditional behavior. Lifecycle:

Phase	Version	Notes
Active	pre-2d684a1
Deprecated but functional	unverified
Dropped	1.0.0	(ovos-workshop 2d684a1, #235)

OVOSSkill._conditional_activate() removed

The private helper that auto-re-activated a skill after converse/intent handling, and the skill class's own emission of ovos.utterance.handled, are both gone: that bookkeeping moved into ovos-core's fallback pipeline to stop duplicate events. See Pipelines Overview for how pipeline plugins are ordered and dispatched.

• Migration: remove any override or call of _conditional_activate. Do not assume the skill class emits ovos.utterance.handled yourself. Lifecycle:

Phase	Version	Notes
Active	before 6649c4f
Deprecated but functional	unverified
Dropped	2.0.0 (ovos-workshop 6649c4f, #262, 2024-10-31)

Backend settings sync removed from OVOSSkill

enable_settings_manager kwarg, self.settings_manager, self._settings_meta, and SkillSettingsManager (Selene/backend two-way settings sync, settingsmeta.json auto-upload) are all removed.

• Migration: remove enable_settings_manager from super().__init__() calls. Use self.settings (local JsonStorage) only. There is no backend settings sync in OVOS. See Skill Settings Meta for the current settingsmeta.json schema. Lifecycle:

Phase	Version	Notes
Active	before 3c026c2
Deprecated but functional	unverified
Dropped	3.0.0 (ovos-workshop 3c026c2, #295, 2024-11-19)

Legacy non-installable skill loading removed

skill_launcher.py dropped the remaining dead code paths for loading non-pip-installable, classic-mycroft-style skills.

• Migration: package skills as installable Python packages with entry points. Loose-file skill loading from a bare folder is unsupported. Lifecycle:

Phase	Version	Notes
Active	before 421899f
Deprecated but functional	unverified
Dropped	7.0.x line, 421899f (2025-06-21)	(ovos-workshop 421899f, #362)

ovos-core's own equivalent removal of folder-based skill loading (_load_skill, _get_skill_directories, _unload_removed_skills) landed the same era in 62024dbf98 (#690, 2025-06-10, first stable 2.1.0).

Skill locale directories renamed to canonical BCP-47

Bundled locale directories under ovos_workshop/locale/ were renamed from lowercase/short codes (en-us, da, eu, fa-fa) to canonical BCP-47 (en-US, da-DK, eu-ES, fa-IR) to fix duplicate zip entries in wheel builds.

• Migration: ship resource files under canonical BCP-47 folder names. Use ovos_utils.lang.get_language_dir() / CoreResources for resolution instead of manual lowercase path construction. Lifecycle:

Phase	Version	Notes
Active	before e12559e
Deprecated but functional	unverified
Dropped	e12559e (2026-04-03), post-8.0.0, first in 8.0.2a1	(ovos-workshop e12559e, #392)

_get_dialog() removed as a public symbol

Module-level _get_dialog() on ovos_workshop.skills.ovos no longer exists. Locale lookups (_get_dialog, _get_word, CommonQuerySkill.__init__, translated_noise_words) all route through CoreResources/self.resources now.

• Migration: use self.speak_dialog(key) or CoreResources(lang).load_dialog_file(...) instead of importing _get_dialog directly. See Resource Files for how dialog and vocab resources are organized and loaded. Lifecycle:

Phase	Version	Notes
Active	before acbd438
Deprecated but functional	unverified
Dropped	acbd438 (2026-04-08), post-8.0.0, first in 8.0.4a1	(ovos-workshop acbd438, #395)

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Read next: Version-Compatible Skills & Plugins · Upcoming Changes Related: Updating from Older OVOS · Migrating From Mycroft