Abstract: In one embodiment, a method includes receiving a user input comprising input tokens from a client system, parsing the user input to determine ontology tokens and utterance tokens corresponding to the input tokens, decoding the ontology tokens and the utterance tokens to generate a span-based frame representation comprising intents, slots, and a span, wherein the ontology tokens are decoded into the intents and slots, and wherein the utterance tokens are decoded to determine the span comprising one or more tokens of the input tokens, wherein the span comprises a first index endpoint associated with a first token of the one or more tokens and a second index endpoint associated with a second token of the one or more tokens, and executing, responsive to the user input, one or more tasks based on the span-based frame representation.

Abstract: In one embodiment, a system includes an automatic speech recognition (ASR) module, a natural-language understanding (NLU) module, a dialog manager, one or more agents, an arbitrator, a delivery system, one or more processors, and a non-transitory memory coupled to the processors comprising instructions executable by the processors, the processors operable when executing the instructions to receive a user input, process the user input using the ASR module, the NLU module, the dialog manager, one or more of the agents, the arbitrator, and the delivery system, and provide a response to the user input.