Intent-First Interaction: From App-Shaped Labor to Dynamic Interfaces over Integrated Capabilities

Personal computing remains organized around applications. To complete most ordinary tasks, users must select the appropriate application, locate the relevant feature, move data across application boundaries, reconcile incompatible formats, and reconstruct context after each switch. The cumulative effect is that the user functions as the integration layer between otherwise siloed applications. This paper proposes intent-first interaction as an HCI design paradigm for reducing this integration labor. Under the paradigm, users express what they want to accomplish; applications, services, documents, agents, and system tools expose their functionality as callable capabilities; and the system generates task-specific interfaces over the resulting integrated capability set. The generated surfaces support inspection, editing, confirmation, and continuation of composed workflows without requiring users to traverse fixed application structures. The contribution is not the invention of intent-based computing, generative interfaces, tool protocols, agent runtimes, or workflow automation. Each of these is developed in adjacent literatures cited below. The contribution is a user-facing synthesis: a design framework under which applications act as intent-addressable capability providers; interfaces are generated at runtime around the task; successful compositions are preserved as recipes and habits; and a set of governance requirements specifies how integrated systems must act accountably on the user's behalf. The paradigm does not require a new operating-system kernel. Existing kernels, sandboxes, security models, permission systems, and application APIs may remain intact. The change proposed here is located at the HCI and orchestration layer: computing should behave less like a container of separate applications and more like a coherent system acting for the user.