# Passive Goal Creator

> Analyse the user's articulated prompts and accompanying context to derive a precise, actionable goal before any planning or tool use begins.

- **Category**: Agentic AI
- **Subcategory**: Planning & Control Flow
- **Canonical URL**: https://designpattern.fyi/patterns/passive_goal_creator/

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## Description
**Intent**: Analyse the user's articulated prompts and accompanying context to derive a precise, actionable goal before any planning or tool use begins.
**Context**: A team runs an agent behind a dialogue interface where users type short, conversational prompts that are often under-specified relative to what the agent must do. Relevant context lives in memory but does not arrive automatically with the prompt.
**Solution**: - A dedicated component receives the user's prompt via the dialogue interface. - It retrieves related context from memory: recent tasks, conversation history, positive/negative examples, and stored preferences. - It produces a refined, actionable goal that is handed to the planner. - In multi-agent setups, the same component can receive goals via API from a coordinator instead of directly from a user.


## Use Cases
- Users interact through free-form dialogue and prompts are often under-specified.
- Goal context lives in memory or recent history that the planner does not naturally see.
- A single early step can replace many downstream clarifications.





## Trade-offs


### Advantages

- Familiar dialogue surface for users.

- Downstream components plan against an explicit goal rather than a raw prompt.

- Pushes lightweight clarification work to a single early component.




### Considerations & Drawbacks

- Becomes a single point of misinterpretation if the goal extraction is wrong.

- Reasoning uncertainty when the prompt is too ambiguous to refine reliably.







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**Reference**: [Original Source](https://www.agentpatternscatalog.org/patterns/passive-goal-creator/)