# Soda: An Object-Oriented Functional Language for Specifying Human-Centered Problems

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.01961 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.01961/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 2 of its 29 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Oct 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Practical Verification of Decision-Making in Agent-Based Autonomous Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1310.2431/) (2013)
- [Governance by Glass-Box: Implementing Transparent Moral Bounds for AI Behaviour](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.04994/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Can Proof Assistants Verify Multi-Agent Systems?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06812/) (2025)
- [Towards Automated Formal Verification of Backend Systems with LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.10998/) (2025)
- [Composable Verification Pipelines for Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.16266/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present Soda (Symbolic Objective Descriptive Analysis), a language that helps to treat qualities and quantities in a natural way and greatly simplifies the task of checking correctness. We present key properties for the language motivated by the design of a descriptive language to encode complex requirements on computer systems, and we explain how these key properties must be addressed to model these requirements with simple definitions. We give an overview of a tool that helps to describe problems in an easy way, which we consider more transparent and less error-prone.