CEDA — Cosmological Explanation Diagnostic Audit

CEDA is a diagnostic framework, not a cosmological model. It does not propose new dynamics, introduce new fields, or compete with inflation or ΛCDM. Its sole purpose is to audit early-universe proposals by enforcing conservation-honest accounting and by distinguishing genuine physical mechanisms from descriptive bookkeeping.

CEDA does not answer what the early universe did.
It answers what a proposal is actually doing.

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What This Is For

Many early-universe constructions generate inflation-like behavior only after reinterpretation: horizon reweighting, entropy language, effective stress–energy insertion, or privileged coarse-graining. These moves often survive casual checks while quietly shifting explanatory burden.

CEDA exists to expose that shift.

It provides a standardized way to ask:

• Where does the claimed dynamics actually live?
• What breaks when bookkeeping is no longer allowed to do physical work?
• Which degrees of freedom are genuinely dynamical, and which are descriptive?

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Quickstart — Audit Workflow

1. Fill out a Model Card
   templates/model-card.md

2. Pass the Run Validity Gate
   protocol/run-validity-gate.md

3. Run diagnostics (in order):

   • tests/D1-horizon-reconfiguration-null.md
   • tests/D2-coarse-graining-stability.md
   • tests/D3-exchange-term-provenance.md
   • tests/D4-mechanism-audit.md

4. Record outcomes in a Diagnostic Report
   templates/diagnostic-report.md

5. Archive the completed run under:
   audits/CEDA-XXX-<paper-or-class>/

That is the entire workflow. No interpretation after verdict.

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Repository Map

• audits/ — completed audit runs (paper-level and class-level)
• framework/ — CEDA principles, assumptions, glossary
• protocol/ — run validity gate, verdict rules, no-rescue rule
• tests/ — diagnostic tests (D1–D4)
• templates/ — required Model Card and Diagnostic Report formats
• paper/ — canonical framework paper(s)
• sources/ — source papers audited (PDFs)

Start with templates/, then protocol/run-validity-gate.md, then tests/D1-horizon-reconfiguration-null.md.

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What CEDA Is Not

• Not a replacement for inflation
• Not an alternative cosmological model
• Not an observational framework
• Not a mechanism generator

CEDA does not judge whether inflation is correct.
It clarifies why inflationary models require real dynamics to work.

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Status and Scope

Status: External review / diagnostic test-ground

Scope:
CEDA audits inflation-adjacent early-universe proposals for:

• degree-of-freedom discipline
• conservation and exchange accounting
• coarse-graining stability
• mechanism vs reinterpretation clarity

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Core Claim (and only claim)

If a proposal relies on hidden structure, retrospective reinterpretation, or privileged description to generate physical behavior, the audit will surface it.

What you do with that result is up to you.