Warning: This document is for an old version of Rasa. The latest version is 1.4.5.

Dialogue Elements

Dialogue elements are common conversation patterns. We use three different levels of abstraction to discuss AI assistants. This can be helpful in a product team, so that you have a common language which designers, developers, and product owners can use to discuss issues and new features.

  • highest level: user goals
  • middle level: dialogue elements
  • lowest level: intents, entities, actions, slots, and templates.


Some chatbot tools use the word intent to refer to the user goal. This is confusing because only some messages tell you what a user’s goal is. If a user says “I want to open an account” (intent: open_account), that is clearly their goal. But most user messages (“yes”, “what does that mean?”, “I don’t know”) aren’t specific to one goal. In Rasa, every message has an intent, and a user goal describes what a person wants to achieve.