We present Clocked Cubical Type Theory, the first type theory combining multi-clocked guarded recursion with the features of Cubical Type Theory. Guarded recursion is an abstract form of step-indexing, which can be used for construction of advanced programming language models. In its multi-clocked version, it can also be used for coinductive programming and reasoning, encoding productivity in types. Combining this with Higher Inductive Types (HITs) the encoding extends to coinductive types that are traditionally hard to represent in type theory, such as the type of finitely branching labelled transition systems.

Abstract Proof assistants based on dependent type theory provide expressive languages for both programming and proving within the same system. However, all of the major implementations lack powerful extensionality principles for reasoning about equality, such as function and propositional extensionality. These principles are typically added axiomatically which disrupts the constructive properties of these systems. Cubical type theory provides a solution by giving computational meaning to Homotopy Type Theory and Univalent Foundations, in particular to the univalence axiom and higher inductive types (HITs). This paper describes an extension of the dependently typed functional programming language Agda with cubical primitives, making it into a full-blown proof assistant with native support for univalence and a general schema of HITs. These new primitives allow the direct definition of function and propositional extensionality as well as quotient types, all with computational content. Additionally, thanks also to copatterns, bisimilarity is equivalent to equality for coinductive types. The adoption of cubical type theory extends Agda with support for a wide range of extensionality principles, without sacrificing type checking and constructivity.

Dependent type theories with guarded recursion have shown themselves suitable for the development of denotational semantics of programming languages. In particular Ticked Cubical Type Theory (TCTT) has been used to show that for guarded labelled transition systems (GLTS) interpretation into the denotational semantics maps bisimilar processes to equal values. In fact the two notions are proved equivalent, allowing one to reason about equality in place of bisimilarity.

This paper improves the treatment of equality in guarded dependent type theory ( $$\mathsf {GDTT}$$ ), by combining it with cubical type theory ( $$\mathsf {CTT}$$ ). $$\mathsf {GDTT}$$ is an extensional type theory with guarded recursive types, which are useful for building models of program logics, and for programming and reasoning with coinductive types. We wish to implement $$\mathsf {GDTT}$$ with decidable type checking, while still supporting non-trivial equality proofs that reason about the extensions of guarded recursive constructions. $$\mathsf {CTT}$$ is a variation of Martin–Löf type theory in which the identity type is replaced by abstract paths between terms. $$\mathsf {CTT}$$ provides a computational interpretation of functional extensionality, enjoys canonicity for the natural numbers type, and is conjectured to support decidable type-checking. Our new type theory, guarded cubical type theory ( $$\mathsf {GCTT}$$ ), provides a computational interpretation of extensionality for guarded recursive types. This further expands the foundations of $$\mathsf {CTT}$$ as a basis for formalisation in mathematics and computer science. We present examples to demonstrate the expressivity of our type theory, all of which have been checked using a prototype type-checker implementation. We show that $$\mathsf {CTT}$$ can be given semantics in presheaves on $$\mathcal {C}\times \mathbb {D}$$ , where $$\mathcal {C}$$ is the cube category, and $$\mathbb {D}$$ is any small category with an initial object. We then show that the category of presheaves on $$\mathcal {C}\times \omega $$ provides semantics for $$\mathsf {GCTT}$$ .

Proof assistants based on dependent type theory provide expressive languages for both programming and proving within the same system. However, all of the major implementations lack powerful extensionality principles for reasoning about equality, such as function and propositional extensionality. These principles are typically added axiomatically which disrupts the constructive properties of these systems. Cubical type theory provides a solution by giving computational meaning to Homotopy Type Theory and Univalent Foundations, in particular to the univalence axiom and higher inductive types. This paper describes an extension of the dependently typed functional programming language Agda with cubical primitives, making it into a full-blown proof assistant with native support for univalence and a general schema of higher inductive types. These new primitives make function and propositional extensionality as well as quotient types directly definable with computational content. Additionally, thanks also to copatterns, bisimilarity is equivalent to equality for coinductive types. This extends Agda with support for a wide range of extensionality principles, without sacrificing type checking and constructivity.

Type theory should be able to handle its own meta-theory, both to justify its foundational claims and to obtain a verified implementation. At the core of a type checker for intensional type theory lies an algorithm to check equality of types, or in other words, to check whether two types are convertible. We have formalized in Agda a practical conversion checking algorithm for a dependent type theory with one universe à la Russell, natural numbers, and η-equality for Π types. We prove the algorithm correct via a Kripke logical relation parameterized by a suitable notion of equivalence of terms. We then instantiate the parameterized fundamental lemma twice: once to obtain canonicity and injectivity of type formers, and once again to prove the completeness of the algorithm. Our proof relies on inductive-recursive definitions, but not on the uniqueness of identity proofs. Thus, it is valid in variants of intensional Martin-Löf Type Theory as long as they support induction-recursion, for instance, Extensional, Observational, or Homotopy Type Theory.

Sized types have been developed to make termination checking more perspicuous, more powerful, and more modular by integrating termination into type checking. In dependently-typed proof assistants where proofs by induction are just recursive functional programs, the termination checker is an integral component of the trusted core, as validity of proofs depend on termination. However, a rigorous integration of full-fledged sized types into dependent type theory is lacking so far. Such an integration is non-trivial, as explicit sizes in proof terms might get in the way of equality checking, making terms appear distinct that should have the same semantics. In this article, we integrate dependent types and sized types with higher-rank size polymorphism, which is essential for generic programming and abstraction. We introduce a size quantifier ∀ which lets us ignore sizes in terms for equality checking, alongside with a second quantifier Π for abstracting over sizes that do affect the semantics of types and terms. Judgmental equality is decided by an adaptation of normalization-by-evaluation for our new type theory, which features type shape -directed reflection and reification. It follows that subtyping and type checking of normal forms are decidable as well, the latter by a bidirectional algorithm.

Polymorphic type systems such as System F enjoy the parametricity property: polymorphic functions cannot inspect their type argument and will therefore apply the same algorithm to any type they are instantiated on. This idea is formalized mathematically in Reynolds's theory of relational parametricity, which allows the metatheoretical derivation of parametricity theorems about all values of a given type. Although predicative System F embeds into dependent type systems such as Martin-Löf Type Theory (MLTT), parametricity does not carry over as easily. The identity extension lemma, which is crucial if we want to prove theorems involving equality, has only been shown to hold for small types, excluding the universe. We attribute this to the fact that MLTT uses a single type former Π to generalize both the parametric quantifier ∀ and the type former → which is non-parametric in the sense that its elements may use their argument as a value. We equip MLTT with parametric quantifiers ∀ and ∃ alongside the existing Π and Σ, and provide relation type formers for proving parametricity theorems internally. We show internally the existence of initial algebras and final co-algebras of indexed functors both by Church encoding and, for a large class of functors, by using sized types. We prove soundness of our type system by enhancing existing iterated reflexive graph (cubical set) models of dependently typed parametricity by distinguishing between edges that express relatedness of objects (bridges) and edges that express equality (paths). The parametric functions are those that map bridges to paths. We implement an extension to the Agda proof assistant that type-checks proofs in our type system.

This paper improves the treatment of equality in guarded dependent type theory (GDTT), by combining it with cubical type theory (CTT). GDTT is an extensional type theory with guarded recursive types, which are useful for building models of program logics, and for programming and reasoning with coinductive types. We wish to implement GDTT with decidable type checking, while still supporting non-trivial equality proofs that reason about the extensions of guarded recursive constructions. CTT is a variation of Martin-Löf type theory in which the identity type is replaced by abstract paths between terms. CTT provides a computational interpretation of functional extensionality, is conjectured to have decidable type checking, and has an implemented type checker. Our new type theory, called guarded cubical type theory, provides a computational interpretation of extensionality for guarded recursive types. This further expands the foundations of CTT as a basis for formalisation in mathematics and computer science. We present examples to demonstrate the expressivity of our type theory, all of which have been checked using a prototype type-checker implementation, and present semantics in a presheaf category.

In homotopy type theory, the truncation operator ||-||n (for a number n > -2) is often useful if one does not care about the higher structure of a type and wants to avoid coherence problems. However, its elimination principle only allows to eliminate into n-types, which makes it hard to construct functions ||A||n -> B if B is not an n-type. This makes it desirable to derive more powerful elimination theorems. We show a first general result: If B is an (n+1)-type, then functions ||A||n -> B correspond exactly to functions A -> B which are constant on all (n+1)-st loop spaces. We give one "elementary" proof and one proof that uses a higher inductive type, both of which require some effort. As a sample application of our result, we show that we can construct "set-based" representations of 1-types, as long as they have "braided" loop spaces. The main result with one of its proofs and the application have been formalised in Agda.