Systems and methods for building a response for a machine learning-based dialogue agent includes implementing machine learning classifiers that predict slot segments of the utterance data based on an input of the utterance data; predict a slot classification label for each of the slot segments of the utterance data; computing a semantic vector value for each of the slot segments of the utterance data; assessing the semantic vector value of the slot segments of the utterance data against a multi-dimensional vector space of structured categories of dialogue, wherein the assessment includes: for each of a distinct structured categories of dialogue computing a similarity metric value; selecting one structured category of dialogue from the distinct structured categories of dialogue based on the computed similarity metric value for each of distinct structured categories; and producing a response to the utterance data.