Federated from workspace · PRD-001 · Dental Clinic Revenue Operating System/docs/technical/CONVERSATION_BEHAVIOR_ENGINE.md Do not edit canonical truth here — update the source repo, then re-run npm run docs:sync.

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Conversation Behavior Engine

Status: Implemented (2026-07-05)
Authority: App\Modules\AI\Application\Conversation

Purpose

Social and conversational turns are not capabilities. They must never enter PL-003 runtime (CapabilityMatcher → Planner → Tools).

Large-product pattern:

User message
    ↓
Conversation Behavior Engine   ← greeting, thanks, small talk, etc.
    ↓ (response, stop)
Intent Understanding Engine    ← operational / guidance intents only
    ↓
Capability Matcher → Planner → Execution

Behaviors

Behavior	Examples	Enters runtime?
Greeting	hello, hi	No
Social talk	how are you	No
Thanks	thank you	No
Goodbye	bye, see you	No
Acknowledgement	good, ok, okay	No
Small talk	nice, cool	No
Confirmation	yes, go ahead (short)	No
Clarification / Unknown	what?, asdfgh	No
Cancellation	cancel it	No
Continuation	explain more	Only if prior turn was operational — then passes resolved message to Intent Engine

Components

Component	Role
ClinicConversationBehaviorEngine	Primary entry — evaluate message + context
ClinicConversationBehaviorDetector	Classifies behavior (no capability keywords)
ClinicConversationBehaviorResponseBuilder	Builds response without tools
ClinicConversationBehaviorResult	DTO with exitsRuntime() gate

Configuration

CLINIC_CONVERSATION_BEHAVIOR_ENABLED=true

Tests

php artisan test app/Modules/AI/Tests/Unit/ClinicConversationBehaviorEngineTest.php
php artisan test tests/Feature/ClinicAgentIntentAcceptanceTest.php

Intent coverage testing

See CLINIC_CAPABILITY_COVERAGE_TESTING.md.