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 $$\mathsf {GCTT}$$ .

Guarded recursion in the sense of Nakano allows general recursive types and terms to be added to type theory without breaking consistency. Recent work has demonstrated applications of guarded recursion such as programming with codata, reasoning about coinductive types, as well as constructing and reasoning about denotational models of general recursive types. Guarded recursion can also be used as an abstract form of step-indexing for reasoning about programming languages with advanced features. Ultimately, we would like to have an implementation of a type theory with guarded recursion in which all these applications can be carried out and machine-checked. In this paper, we take a step towards this goal by devising a suitable reduction semantics. We present Clocked Type Theory, a new type theory for guarded recursion that is more suitable for reduction semantics than the existing ones. We prove confluence, strong normalisation and canonicity for its reduction semantics, constructing the theoretical basis for a future implementation. We show how coinductive types as exemplified by streams can be encoded, and derive that the type system ensures productivity of stream definitions.

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.

We present guarded dependent type theory, $$\mathsf {gDTT}$$ , an extensional dependent type theory with a ‘later’ modality and clock quantifiers for programming and proving with guarded recursive and coinductive types. The later modality is used to ensure the productivity of recursive definitions in a modular, type based, way. Clock quantifiers are used for controlled elimination of the later modality and for encoding coinductive types using guarded recursive types. Key to the development of $$\mathsf {gDTT}$$ are novel type and term formers involving what we call ‘delayed substitutions’. These generalise the applicative functor rules for the later modality considered in earlier work, and are crucial for programming and proving with dependent types. We show soundness of the type theory with respect to a denotational model.