English

Generalized action monads and descent

Category Theory 2026-07-10 v1

Abstract

We develop a monadic approach to actions of internal categories. Given an internal category, we construct a monad on a slice whose algebras are the actions of that internal category. Then, we give a complete characterization of the monads that arise in this way; we call them generalized action monads. Finally, we prove that these monads yield a well-behaved notion of generalized descent.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.09595,
  title  = {Generalized action monads and descent},
  author = {Elena Caviglia and Sophie Marques and Luca Mesiti},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.09595},
  year   = {2026}
}