Operad groups and their finiteness properties

We propose a new unifying framework for Thompson-like groups using a well-known device called operads and category theory as language. We discuss examples of operad groups which have appeared in the literature before. As a first application, we prove a theorem which implies that planar or symmetric or braided operads with transformations satisfying some finiteness conditions yield operad groups of type F∞. This unifies and extends existing proofs that certain Thompson-like groups are of type F∞.