Bousfield-Kan completion as a codensity $\infty$-monad

Abstract: We develop a theory of codensity monads associated with full subcategories in the setting of $\infty$-categories. For an $\infty$-monad $\mathcal{M}$ on an $\infty$-category $\mathcal{C}$ that admits homotopy totalizations, we consider the $\mathcal{M}$-completion functor defined as the homotopy totalization of the canonical cosimplicial functor associated with $\mathcal{M}$. We prove that the $\mathcal{M}$-completion is the codensity $\infty$-monad of a full subcategory $\mathcal{A}(\mathcal{M})\subseteq \mathcal{C}$ spanned by objects that admit a structure of $\mathcal{M}$-algebra. This implies that the $\mathcal{M}$-completion is the terminal object in the $\infty$-category of $\infty$-monads preserving all objects of $\mathcal{A}(\mathcal{M})$. As an application, we prove that the classical Bousfield-Kan $R$-completion functor is the codensity $\infty$-monad of the full $\infty$-subcategory in the $\infty$-category of spaces $\mathcal{K}(R) \subseteq \mathsf{Spc}$ spanned by the empty space and the products of Eilenberg-MacLane spaces of $R$-modules. As a corollary, we obtain two universal properties of the Bousfield-Kan $R$-completion: it is the terminal $\mathcal{K}(R)$-preserving coaugmented functor, and the terminal $\mathcal{K}(R)$-preserving $\infty$-monad.