Intent

Intent, according to Brandon, means one has to be wanting to do things to make a lot of the different magics in the cosmere work. For this, there are narrative reasons, and there are writerly reasons (for a lot of the things he does).

The narrative reasons are because it's just safer, a lot safer for people. And it allows those who are experts in the magic and who actually work with it to become better. Knowing what one is doing, and knowing and learning. He wants there to always be an aspect of learning and practice to a lot of the magic systems.

A more narrative reason is that there are a lot of things he wants to do with the cosmere magics that, when they interact with the physics of the real world, he needs some wiggle room. This can be seen with destructive interference in sounds in Rhythm of War. In the way that it works in the cosmere, thinking of something as destructive interference actually creates for it a feeling, an Identity, as destructive interference. Whereas, in reality, with destructive interference, there's nothing inherent to it being destructive interference. It's the same sound, just played in a different way. But in the cosmere, adding this element of Identity to it, through Intent, specifically makes it do something. This just allows him more gears and levers to play with as a designer of a magic system to make the physics work. And, basically, a lot of these things are ... imagine Intent, narratively, as the converter between real-world physics and cosmere physics, the little adapter that one sticks between them. By adding Intent, He has an adapter.

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"That works really nicely; it's very writerly to try to explain this, but it works really nicely for smoothing the line between real-world physics and cosmere physics in a way that makes it much more fun for me to write, and much more consistent with both things, real physics and made-up physics."

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Further, again according to Brandon, at the basic level ... the more specific and the more powerful one wants to be, the more one needs to understand each their Intent. The body has an Intent. Kaladin uses the magic while he's unconscious. The Intent is to survive, and the body knows it needs to survive. This is possible to an extent with a lot of the magic systems. In a base, physical sense, one's body knows how to use what it's been given, and thus, that which is going to happen. Readers are going to see this with other instances in the magic as well. And even kind of not knowing or not wanting to face it, one can get some base level of power in most of the magics. Though one can make the argument that one's body just wants to survive, Intent really starts to play into it when one is doing distinct and increasingly powerful things with the magics. Intent is like one's ability to focus (i.e., one can fire a sniper rifle on accident, but hitting the thing that one wants to hit with it requires a lot of practice and focus. That practice and focus in magic systems is often Intent-related.)

Notes

When asked whether Intention and Intent are the same thing, Brandon replied that he considers them to be the same thing. That they are synonyms in cosmere terms.

When asked what the difference is between Intent and Command, Brandon responded with the following:

“	"Intent encompasses more understanding. Command is specifically narrow. A lot of times, these things are gonna be conflated, because they basically can be. Like, if Vasher creates an Awakened thing and says "go get me those keys." The Intent is: "I need the keys to get outta here. I want to be free." The Command is: "Go fetch keys." Those are two different things, but they are working toward the same goal. It is important in cosmere terms that the Intent is understood, even if sometimes the words that can speak 'em are clunky and smaller in scale by nature than the Intent." "Let's say the Intent of a Shard encompasses more than the word that the Shard is described by. It's a similar thing that the Intent of a Command is often vaster than the actual words spoken. And the magic can grasp the Intent, not just the Command, depending on the magic system and how good you are at it, and things like that. The words are there to focus Intent."	”
–Brandon Sanderson