Formalization of dependent type theory: The example of CaTT

TL;DR

This paper formalizes the type theory CaTT within homotopy type theory, proving its meta-properties and providing a foundation for related theories like MCaTT, with implementation in Agda.

Contribution

It thoroughly formalizes CaTT in homotopy type theory, proving its meta-properties and extending to related theories, filling foundational gaps.

Findings

Formal proof of meta-properties of CaTT

Simplification due to absence of definitional equality

Formalization applicable to related type theories

Abstract

We present the type theory CaTT, originally introduced by Finster and Mimram to describe globular weak $\omega$-categories, and we formalise this theory in the language of homotopy type theory. Most of the studies about this type theory assume that it is well-formed and satisfy the usual syntactic properties that dependent type theories enjoy, without being completely clear and thorough about what these properties are exactly. We use the formalisation that we provide to list and formally prove all of these meta-properties, thus filling a gap in the foundational aspect. We discuss the key aspects of the formalisation inherent to the theory CaTT, in particular that the absence of definitional equality greatly simplify the study, but also that specific side conditions are challenging to properly model. We present the formalisation in a way that not only handles the type theory CaTT but also all the related type theories that share the same structure, and in particular we show that this formalisation provides a proper ground to the study of the theory MCaTT which describes the globular, monoidal weak $\omega$-categories. The article is accompanied by a development in the proof assistant Agda to actually check the formalisation that we present.