Abstract: Systems and methods for an automated conversation with a transactional assistant are provided. This conversation relies upon initially a set of exchanges being defined. Each exchange connected to every other exchange by bidirectional edge transitions. A response from the conversation target is received, and is processed for natural language understanding (NLU) generate intents and entities. After the NLU, a determination is made which bidirectional edge transition applies, as a function of the intent and the source exchange. Subsequently, the exchange may be transitioned to a new exchange based upon the determined bidirectional edge transition, and a response is formulated using natural language generation (NLG) for the new exchange.