The Open Voice Interoperability Initiative

The Open Voice Interoperability Initiative is developing specifications for a universal, open API that will allow agentic voice and chatbot systems to collaborate.

There are currently three specifications, together called the Open Floor Protocol (OFP). These are the (1) Conversation Envelope, which is the overall inter-agent messaging format (2) the Assistant Manifest, which agents use to describe their capabilities and (3) Dialog Events, which is used to transmit natural language inputs, both from users and agents. Version 1.0 of the specifications was released in May, 2025.These specifications make possible the full delegation of voice/chat dialogs to other agents, regardless of their hosting ecosystem and underlying implementation platforms. A notable feature of the OFP is support for multiple agents to be present at a virtual conversational floor at the same time.

This capability is especially applicable to exploratory problem-solving scenarios involving several agents with complementary expertise.The Open Voice Interoperability Initiative is an incubation-stage project of the LF AI & Data Foundation, contributed in October 2023.To learn more, please take a look the resources below, where you can visit our website and GitHub repositories, and find out about our meetings.

We have two meeting series; the best starting point for joining the project is attending the Open Voice Interoperability AWG Interoperable Standards Meeting, which meets weekly on Tuesdays at 8am Eastern U.S. time. Those who are interested can sign up for the meeting series here.