Beliefs, Desires, and Intentions
The BDI model is a classical software model developed to program intelligent agents. **Beliefs** represent what the agent knows about the world (its data). **Desires** represent the goals the agent wants to achieve. **Intentions** represent the specific plan the agent has committed to executing right now.
The power of BDI is in its "Commitment Strategy." An agent shouldn't drop its intentions at the first sign of trouble, but it also shouldn't pursue them if they become impossible. BDI provides the logic for when an agent should stick to its plan and when it should stop and replan.
Modern BDI with LLMs
While the original BDI was built using hard-coded logic, modern agentic systems use LLMs to dynamically generate and update beliefs, desires, and intentions. This has revitalized the framework, making it flexible enough for the modern, unstructured digital world.
Conclusion
BDI remains one of the most robust ways to think about agency. By grounding autonomous behavior in the concepts of belief and intent, we can build agents that act with human-like purpose and consistency.