A truth maintenance system, or TMS, is a knowledge representation method for representing both beliefs and their dependencies. The name truth maintenance is due to the ability of these systems to restore consistency.
Many kinds of truth maintenance systems exist. Two major types are single-context and multi-context truth maintenance. In single context systems, consistency is maintained among all facts in memory (database). Multi-context systems allow consistency to be relevant to a subset of facts in memory (a context) according to the history of logical inference. This is achieved by tagging each fact or deduction with its logical history. Multi-agent truth maintenance systems perform truth maintenance across multiple memories, often located on different machines. The first multi-agent TMS was created by Mason and Johnson. It was a multi-context system. Bridgeland and Huhns created the first single-context multi-agent system.

Notes

Knowledge representation
Artificial intelligence