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Agents situated in dynamic and uncertain environments require several capabilities for successful operation. Such agents must monitor the world and respond appropriately to important events. The agents should be able to accept goals, synthesize complex plans for achieving those goals, and execute the plans while continuing to be responsive to changes in the world. As events render some current activities obsolete, the agents should be able to modify their plans while continuing activities unaffected by those events. The Cypress system is a domain-independent framework for defining persistent agents with this full range of behaviour. Cypress has been used for several demanding applications, including military operations, real-time tracking, and fault diagnosis.