Guest Editors' Introduction: Planning with Templates

Templates are standard operating procedures that can be used for solving typical problems and as a starting point for solving novel problems. These structures contain relevant variables (and required activities) and current variable values (or specific activities) that affect a problem or have been chosen in a problem-solving instance. With templates you can configure domain-independent planning algorithms, making them applicable to many different problem domains. By making the template explicit for the user in the form of a GUI, you can facilitate mixed-initiative, user-centric systems that help maintain awareness of complex and dynamic situations, share information across the network, and solve problems incrementally and iteratively.