The answer to my question is almost certainly "not much" — at least, I've asked a few people, and that was their answer. But I'd like to refine this answer, and MathOverflow seems like the best place.
I learned from David Ben-Zvi in an answer to this question the following theorem:
Let mathcalC be a 1-category, and consider the category operatornameRep(mathcalC) of 1-functors mathcalCtooperatorname1Vect. It is a (symmetric) monoidal category by "pointwise tensor product", i.e. pulling back along the diagonal map mathcalCtomathcalCtimes2. Conversely, we can consider some sort of "spec" of operatornameRep(mathcalC), namely the category of monoidal functors (and monoidal natural transformations) operatornameRep(mathcalC)tooperatorname1Vect. In fact, this "spec" is equivalent as a category to mathcalC.
Given this, it is natural to ask the following three questions (or combinations thereof):
- Recognition: which monoidal categories are of the form operatornameRep(mathcalC) for some mathcalC?
- Bump up n: modulo definitions, it is clear what the statement is with "1" replaced by "n". For example, the "0" version of the above says that a set is recoverable up to isomorphism from its algebra of all functions (the 0-category operatorname0Vect is precisely the ground field).
- Internalize: is there a similar statement for "topological categories" and "continuous functors", for example? A version of in algebrogeometric land is in these questions (see also the answer here).
I'm not asking for definite answers to any of these directions, because I expect that telling the complete story is hard. But I am hoping for references to the existing literature. Hence: "What's already known (in the literature) about higher-categorical reconstruction theorems?"
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