# Create a project and Dialogflow agent (Dialogflow)

To develop with Dialogflow, you first need to create an Actions project and a
Dialogflow agent. Having a project allows you to access the developer console to
manage and distribute your Action. The Dialogflow agent contains all the intents
that define your Action.

> [!NOTE]
> **Note:** When creating a new project, Actions on Google enables [Firebase](https://firebase.google.com/), Google's developer platform that provides a number of services for app developers. Relative terms of service information can be found in the [Actions on Google Terms Explanation](https://developers.google.com/assistant/console/policies/terms-explanation).

## Create an Actions project and Dialogflow agent

1. Go to the [Actions console](https://console.actions.google.com/).
2. Click **New project**.
3. Enter a name for your project and click **Create Project** . ![](https://developers.google.com/static/assistant/images/create-project.png)
4. Scroll down to the **More options** section and click on the **Conversational** card. ![](https://developers.google.com/static/assistant/images/custom-conversation.png)
5. Click **Develop** in the top menu, then click **Actions** in the left menu.
6. Click **Add Your First Action**.
7. On the **Custom intent** card, click **Build**.
8. The Dialogflow console appears with the information automatically populated in an agent. Click **Create** to save the agent.

## The Dialogflow console

You should now see the Dialogflow console and the menu panel on the left. If
you're on a small screen and the menu is hidden, click
in the upper left corner.

The center window shows the list of intents for the agent. By default,
Dialogflow agents start with two intents. The *Default Welcome Intent* greets
your users. Your agent matches the *Default Fallback Intent* when it doesn't
understand what the users say.

The Dialogflow simulator is on the right side of the page. The simulator lets
you try out your agent by speaking or typing messages. In the Dialogflow
simulator, click **Try it now**, type anything, and press enter.

![](https://developers.google.com/static/assistant/df-asdk/dialogflow/images/creating-console-ui.png)

**Figure 1**. A screenshot of the Dialogflow console showing an agent.

## Create your first intent

Dialogflow uses intents to categorize a user's intentions. Intents have
*Training Phrases*, which are examples of what a user might say to your agent.
For instance, a user who wants to know your agent's name might ask, "What is
your name?", "Do you have a name?", or simply say "name". These phrases have the
same end goal: to get the name of your agent.

To create an agent that handles this case, follow these steps:

1. Click next to **Intents** in the navigation menu.
2. Enter `Name` in the **Intent name** text field.
3. In the **Training Phrases** section, click **Add Training Phrases**.
4. Enter the following phrases (press enter after each phrase):
   - `What is your name?`
   - `Do you have a name?`
   - `name`
5. In the **Responses** section, click **Add Response**.
6. Enter the following response in the **Text Response** window:
   - `My name is Dialogflow!`
7. Click **Save**.

## Try it out

![](https://developers.google.com/static/assistant/df-asdk/dialogflow/images/creating-008.png)

To test your new *Name* intent, in the Dialogflow simulator, type "What's
your name?" and press enter.

Your agent can respond to your question correctly even when you ask questions
that aren't exactly the same as the training phrases (for example, "What's your
name?" versus "What is your name?").

Dialogflow uses training phrases to train a machine learning model, which helps
the agent match user utterances to the correct intents.