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CONCEPT Cited by 1 source

Intent vs implementation separation

Definition

Intent vs implementation separation is the architectural principle of maintaining a strict boundary between what a system should do (business intent, expressed declaratively) and how it does it (execution artifacts, generated by the system). The intent is authored by domain users or business stakeholders; the implementation is produced by compilers, composers, or code-generation tools.

Why it matters

  • Regulated environments (GxP, financial services) require that business users can define workflow behavior without authoring or modifying execution code. A composer generates the runtime artifact, maintaining separation of duties.
  • Governance — auditors review the specification (intent) as the record of what was requested; the execution artifact is a derived, reproducible output.
  • Evolvability — the composition layer can change (different orchestrator, different runtime) without modifying intent or requiring re-approval.

Relationship to separation of concerns

This concept is a specialization of concepts/separation-of-concerns focused specifically on the boundary between business-level description and system-level execution. While separation of concerns is broad (modules, services, planes), intent vs implementation separation targets the handoff from what to how — often at a human-role boundary.

(Source: sources/2026-07-09-aws-specification-driven-composition-for-flexible-data-workflows)

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