# User intent classification

**Source:** https://promtable.com/glossary/user-intent-classification

> User intent classification is the layer that determines what the user actually wants from a query — used to route to the right agent, tool, or response strategy before generation.

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User intent classification is the layer that determines what the user actually wants from a query — used to route to the right agent, tool, or response strategy before generation.

Intent classification is the first step of any multi-skill assistant. Given a query, classify into one of a defined set of intents ("billing question", "product feature request", "technical support", "sales inquiry"). Approaches: a small LLM with a tight system prompt + tool listing, semantic routing via embedding similarity to prototypes, or a fine-tuned classifier. The downstream pipeline branches on the classification. For production assistants the intent classifier is the single highest-leverage component — wrong-intent routing wastes context, picks the wrong tools, and produces irrelevant answers.

## When to use

- Multi-skill assistants and agents.
- Cost-sensitive deployments where wrong-intent routing wastes expensive calls.

## Common mistakes

- Vague intent definitions — classifier confuses overlapping intents.
- No fallback / unknown intent — ambiguous queries get mis-routed silently.

## Related terms

- [semantic-routing](https://promtable.com/glossary/semantic-routing)
- [tool-router](https://promtable.com/glossary/tool-router)
- [router-llm](https://promtable.com/glossary/router-llm)
- [agent](https://promtable.com/glossary/agent)

*Last updated: 2026-06-01*
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Original page: https://promtable.com/glossary/user-intent-classification
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