A state contains all of the information necessary to predict the effects of an action and to determine if it is a goal state.

The idea is that a problem can be solved by examining the steps that can lead to a goal state (solution).This may involve several searches from the initial state to the goal state within an optimal time

State-Space searching assumes that:

• The agent has a perfect knowledge of the state space and can observe what it is in (i.e., there is full observability);
• The agent has a set of actions that have known deterministic effects;
• Some states are goal states, the agent wants to reach one of these goal states, and the agent can recognize a goal state;
• A solution is a sequence of actions that will get the agent from the current state to a goal state.