comonadic

Comonadic is a term used in category theory to describe phenomena governed by comonads, the categorical dual of monads. A comonad on a category C consists of an endofunctor G: C → C together with natural transformations ε: G ⇒ Id_C (counit) and δ: G ⇒ G∘G (cocomultiplication) satisfying coassociativity and counit laws. Concretely, for every object X in C, (G X) maps to (G G X) via δ_X, and to X via ε_X, with (G ε_X) ∘ δ_X = id_{G X} and (ε_{G X}) ∘ δ_X = id_{G X}, and (G δ_X) ∘ δ_X = (δ_{G X}) ∘ δ_X.

A functor U: D → C is called comonadic if D is equivalent to the category of coalgebras for some comonad on C, denoted C^G, and U corresponds to the forgetful functor C^G → C. In other words, a comonadic functor realizes D as a category of coalgebras for a suitably chosen comonad on C. This is the dual notion to a monadic functor, where a category is described as algebras for a monad rather than coalgebras for a comonad.

Beck-type dual theorems provide practical criteria for comonadicity. Roughly, if U has a right adjoint and certain limits or coequalizers exist and are preserved or created by U, the comparison between D and C^G is an equivalence. These conditions are the dual counterparts of the monadicity conditions for monads.

Examples and applications appear in both mathematics and computer science. The canonical example is the forgetful functor from the category of G-coalgebras to C for a given comonad G. In programming, comonads model computations with context or environment, such as the environment comonad or the stream comonad, and help structure context-sensitive computations.