Structured Vacuum Field Theory: A Constraint-Based Audit of AT2022cmc

AT2022cmc is a luminous, rapidly evolving transient whose multiwavelength coverage places unusually strong demands on theoretical interpretation. We adopt the discovery and follow-up literature as authoritative with respect to data acquisition, reduction, and phenomenological characterization, and we do not propose a new interpretation of the event. Instead, we treat AT2022cmc as an observational forcing function and examine how different theoretical frameworks map the same observational constraints to physical meaning. By explicitly separating observation, inference, and theoretical commitment, we clarify which aspects of current explanations are fixed by data and which depend on background assumptions regarding emission separability, propagation, and persistence. Within this audit framework, we note that multiple theoretical approaches, including frameworks with non-standard assumptions about propagation or persistence, can be articulated at the level of constraint satisfaction without being invoked as explanations for AT2022cmc. The aim is not to adjudicate among theories, but to expose where theoretical openness arises and to identify the types of future observations that would reduce it.