Hey Adrian,
thanks for this - I installed your version : it works!
with a small quirk 
I understand your skill reads the available mycroft-launchable programs from the filenames ending with .desktop in /usr/share/applications/.
This makes it somewhat difficult for kde applications that are in this directory on my debian system as follows (f.e.):
applications$ ls org.kde.*
org.kde.ark.desktop
org.kde.discover.apt.urlhandler.desktop
org.kde.discover.desktop
org.kde.discover.urlhandler.desktop
org.kde.dolphin.desktop
org.kde.drkonqi.desktop
org.kde.filelight.desktop
org.kde.gwenview.desktop
org.kde.Help.desktop
org.kde.k3b.desktop
org.kde.kate.desktop
org.kde.kcalc.desktop
ln or renaming the files solve the problem but seems like a bad hack. Any idea how to overcome this?
Sorry, I don’t have any python knowledge.
Thanks for your efforts!
Best regards,
Johan