A system determines user intent from text. A conversation element is received. An intent is determined by matching a domain independent relationship and a domain dependent term determined from the received conversation element to an intent included in an intent database that stores a plurality of intents and by inputting the matched intent into a trained classifier that computes a likelihood that the matched intent is the intent of the received conversation element. An action is determined based on the determined intent. A response to the received conversation element is generated based on the determined action and output.