  Proof engineering efforts using interactive theorem proving have yielded
several impressive projects in software systems and mathematics. A key obstacle
to such efforts is the requirement that the domain expert is also an expert in
the low-level details in constructing the proof in a theorem prover. In
particular, the user needs to select a sequence of tactics that lead to a
successful proof, a task that in general requires knowledge of the exact names
and use of a large set of tactics.
  We present Lassie, a tactic framework for the HOL4 theorem prover that allows
individual users to define their own tactic language by example and give
frequently used tactics or tactic combinations easier-to-remember names. The
core of Lassie is an extensible semantic parser, which allows the user to
interactively extend the tactic language through a process of definitional
generalization. Defining tactics in Lassie thus does not require any knowledge
in implementing custom tactics, while proofs written in Lassie retain the
correctness guarantees provided by the HOL4 system. We show through case
studies how Lassie can be used in small and larger proofs by novice and more
experienced interactive theorem prover users, and how we envision it to ease
the learning curve in a HOL4 tutorial.
