The recognise-resolve-act cycle

The idea is that the system keeps running through a cycle which consists of three stages:

1. Recognise. Go through the rules, testing the conditions of each against short term memory. Note the ones whose conditions match, and call them the conflict set.

2. Resolve. From the conflict set, pick one rule. Deciding which to use is called conflict resolution, and I'll say more about it later. If the conflict set is empty, or you can't resolve any rules, stop.

3. Act. Obey the rule's action. Doing so is often called firing the rule.