📖What it means

A pre-determined response: a pre-defined answer an agent gives in chat by reading the estate's records - a status report, a spend report, the UAT queue - and changing nothing. It is a competency like an action, listed in the Agent Handbook and graded the same way, but it is not an action: nothing is carried out for the user. The code that performs it declares it an answer, and an independent check proves that code only reads.

📖Easily confused with

[{"term": "Action", "distinction": "An action carries out a pre-defined activity for the user; an answer from the records only reads and tells."}, {"term": "Conversation", "distinction": "A free reply from the model cannot be listed ahead of time; an answer from the records is pre-defined and names its source."}]

📖Nuance

Named on 2026-09-17 when Ninad ruled that an agent responding in a chat is not an action (Rulings Repo agent-resources #34). Ninad calls it a pre-determined response; both names mean this one thing (CLI-461).

📖Also called

- report
- records answer
- pre-determined response
- predetermined response

📖Filed under

Category: governance.

Service: Governance.