
# Core language¶

At the heart of the Coq proof assistant is the Coq kernel. While users have access to a language with many convenient features such as notations, implicit arguments, etc. (presented in the next chapter), those features are translated into the core language (the Calculus of Inductive Constructions) that the kernel understands, which we present here. Furthermore, while users can build proofs interactively using tactics (see Chapter Basic proof writing), the role of these tactics is to incrementally build a "proof term" which the kernel will verify. More precisely, a proof term is a term of the Calculus of Inductive Constructions whose type corresponds to a theorem statement. The kernel is a type checker which verifies that terms have their expected types.

This separation between the kernel on one hand and the elaboration engine and tactics on the other follows what is known as the de Bruijn criterion (keeping a small and well delimited trusted code base within a proof assistant which can be much more complex). This separation makes it necessary to trust only a smaller, critical component (the kernel) instead of the entire system. In particular, users may rely on external plugins that provide advanced and complex tactics without fear of these tactics being buggy, because the kernel will have to check their output.