Intent

Cognition since 1.0 aow:Intent

A structured, actionable goal derived from an Objective and interpretable by agents, orchestrators, and people.

States a business goal in a form that can be planned, assigned, governed, and verified.

Attributes

Attribute	Type	Required	Description
`goal_statement`	text	yes	What the Intent is meant to achieve, stated as an outcome rather than a procedure.
`constraints`	string-list		Free-text constraints that are not (yet) captured as Policies.
`priority`	one of `low`, `medium`, `high`, `critical`		Relative priority.
`acceptable_risk_band`	one of `low`, `medium`, `high`		The level of residual risk the requester accepts.
`status`	one of `proposed`, `active`, `fulfilled`, `abandoned`		Where the Intent is in its life.

Every entity also has an id and a type, and may carry label, description, and the provenance facet: version, created_at, created_by, revision_of.

Relationships

Relationship	Points to	How many	Required	Meaning
`serves_objective`	Objective	one	yes	The Objective an Intent was derived from.
`shaped_by`	Context	many		Context that gives the Intent or Task its situational meaning.
`concerns`	Work Item	many		The Work Item the Intent, Task, or Action is about.
`constrained_by`	Policy	many		Policies that apply.
`requires_assurance`	Assurance Level	one	yes	The highest Assurance Level at which this work may be done. The effective level is the lowest of the Intent's, the Task's, the Skill's, and the performing Agent's autonomy_level.

Pointed to by

From	Relationship	Read backward as
Plan	`realizes`	realized by

Notes

Objective answers why. Intent answers what. Plan answers how.

Alignments

Standard or protocol	Term	Correspondence
BDI agent model	`intention`	relatedMatch

Example

Source: examples/claims-processing.jsonld. The example passes all validation checks.

{
  "id": "intent-eligibility-2026",
  "type": "Intent",
  "label": "Automate eligibility determination",
  "goal_statement": "Determine eligibility for incoming disability claims automatically wherever policy allows, and route the rest to an adjuster with the work already done.",
  "serves_objective": "obj-claims-cycle-time",
  "shaped_by": [
    "ctx-claims-procedure"
  ],
  "constrained_by": [
    "policy-auto-approval",
    "policy-high-risk-review"
  ],
  "requires_assurance": "aow:AL2",
  "acceptable_risk_band": "low",
  "priority": "high",
  "status": "active"
}

Term reference · JSON Schema · SHACL shape aowsh:IntentShape