Cubical Syntax for Reflection-Free Extensional Equality

Abstract

We contribute XTT, a cubical reconstruction of Observational Type Theory which extends Martin-Lof's intensional type theory with a dependent equality type that enjoys function extensionality and a judgmental version of the unicity of identity types principle (UIP): any two elements of the same equality type are judgmentally equal. Moreover, we conjecture that the typing relation can be decided in a practical way. In this paper, we establish an algebraic canonicity theorem using a novel cubical extension (independently proposed by Awodey) of the logical families or categorical gluing argument inspired by Coquand and Shulman: every closed element of boolean type is derivably equal to either 'true' or 'false'.