Consider Lemma 1 from Beilinson's paper "[Coherent Sheaves on $\mathbb{P}^n$ and Problems of Linear Algebra](http://www.ams.org/mathscinet-getitem?mr=509388)", as follows.



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> Let $\mathcal{C}$ and $\mathcal{D}$ be triangulated categories, $F: \mathcal{C} \to \mathcal{D}$ an exact functor, $\{X\_i\}$ be a family of objects of $\mathcal{C}$. Let us assume that $\{X\_i\}$ generates $\mathcal{C}$, $\{F(X\_i)\}$ generates $\mathcal{D}$, and for any pair $X\_i$, $X\_j$ from the family $F: \text{Hom}^\bullet (X\_i , X\_j) \to \text{Hom}^\bullet(F(X\_i), F(X\_j))$ is an isomorphism. Then $F$ is an equivalence of categories.
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My question is, what is the correct way to think about it/the intuition for this? Thanks.



Lemma 1 from Beilinson's "Coherent Sheaves on $\mathbb{P}^n$ and Problems of Linear Algebra", intuition?
I think some of the commenters have forgotten the time when they found vector space linear algebra understandable, but triangulated categories confusing. 


For someone in such a state, a useful tool to help understand statements about triangulated categories is passage to the Grothendieck group. Recall that this is done by taking the abelian group generated by the objects in the category $\mathcal{C}$, divided by the relation in which the sum of three elements of a triangle is zero. This gives an abelian group, and I'll tensor it with a field to get a vector space $[\mathcal{C}]$. Supposing in addition that Hom in the category gives finite dimensional vector spaces, $[\mathcal{C}]$ gets a bilinear form by $B(X, Y) = \dim Hom(X, Y)$. 


For instance, in this case the thus "decategorified" statement is as follows:


Let $C$ and $D$ be vector spaces equipped with bilinear forms, and $F: C \to D$ a linear map. Say $X\_i$ is a spanning set of vectors for $C$ and $F(X\_i)$ spans $D$. Suppose $F$ is "an isometry on the spanning set", i.e., $B(X\_i, X\_j) = B(F(X\_i), F(X\_j))$. Then $F$ is an isometry. 


This is a statement more accessible to intuition. And, as a proof of the original statement necessarily "decategorifies" to a proof of the decategorified one, often one can proceed in reverse and first prove the decategorified statement and then try to lift.


