Expressiveness plus automation plus soundness: Towards combining SMT solvers and interactive proof assistants

Formal system development needs expressive specification languages, but also calls for highly automated tools. These two goals are not easy to reconcile, especially if one also aims at high assurances for correctness. In this paper, we describe a combination of Isabelle/HOL with a proof-producing SMT (Satisfiability Modulo Theories) solver that contains a SAT engine and a decision procedure for quantifier-free first-order logic with equality. As a result, a user benefits from the expressiveness of Isabelle/HOL when modeling a system, but obtains much better automation for those fragments of the proofs that fall within the scope of the (automatic) SMT solver. Soundness is not compromised because all proofs are submitted to the trusted kernel of Isabelle for certification. This architecture is straightforward to extend for other interactive proof assistants and proof-producing reasoners.