Definition. The Bicategory of Categories
The bicategory of categories has
- as 0-cells, categories (at a fixed pair of universe levels, for objects and for morphisms);
- as hom-category , the functor category , so 1-cells are functors and 2-cells are natural transformations;
- as identity 1-cell, the identity functor;
as composition, on functors. On natural transformations and the horizontal composite is given directly by its components
Every component of the left unitor, the right unitor and the associator is an identity morphism, and their inverses are identities too. So the only content of the triangle and pentagon is that composites of identities are identities.
is still a bicategory and not a strict 2-category: and agree on objects and on morphisms, but in the formalization they are not the same functor definitionally. The structure cells are there to name that agreement.
A monad in is an ordinary monad on a category, and a prestack is a pseudofunctor into .