Conditional responses to application commands in a client-server system

Abstract

A client device receives a user request (e.g., in natural language form) to execute a command of an application. The client device delegates interpretation of the request to a response-processing server. Using domain knowledge previously provided by a developer of the application, the response-processing server determines the various possible responses that client devices could make in response to the request based on circumstances such as the capabilities of the client devices and the state of the application data. The response-processing server accordingly generates a response package that describes a number of different conditional responses that client devices could have to the request and provides the response package to the client device. The client device selects the appropriate response from the response package based on the circumstances as determined by the client device, executes the command (if possible), and provides the user with some representation of the response.