Let be a closed monoidal (V-enriched for some ) homotopical category, let denote the tensor unit of . Then the cospan category (same objects and cospans as morphisms) is -enriched, too.
An interval object is defined to be a cospan .
The pushout of this diagram satisfies is contractible (see co-span for this notation).
Let be a monoidal category, let be -enriched, closed monoidal homotopical category, let denote the tensor unit of which we assume to be the terminal object, let denote the interval object of , let be a pointed object of . Let be the functor , .
A direction in is defined to be a subfunctor of preserving the terminal object and satisfying the properties below. In this case is called a direction for . A global element of is called a -directed path in and their collection we denote by the properties are:
(1) The image of every map factoring over the point is in .
(2) is closed under the tensor product. For , their pushout is called their composition.
A directed object is defined to be a pair consisting of an object of and a direction for .
A morphism of directed objects is defined to be a pair making
Let be -enriched, closed monoidal homotopical category, let denote the tensor unit of .
A directed-path-space objects is defined.