MetaTime One (Phase-1): Preregistered Experimental Protocol and Reference Implementation Skeleton for a PCAM Kernel and an Anchoring Risk Index (ARI) Watchdog

We provide a falsifiable Phase-1 validation plan for MetaTime One, a proposed post–von Neumann supercomputing architecture that treats information motion and irreversible operations asfirst-class thermodynamic costs. The protocol specifies (i) an operational computational actionmetric, Scomp =R(P + λΦ) dt, where Φ penalizes heat proxies, cross-hierarchy data motion, andsynchronization stall, (ii) a preregistered A/B design testing whether geometry-aware placementand a variational scheduler (“PCAM Kernel”) reduce Scomp without degrading time-to-solution,and (iii) an Anchoring Risk Index (ARI) watchdog to detect and mitigate non-ergodic freezingin long-horizon simulations. We also include a minimal reference implementation skeleton (Slurmhooks, collectors, aggregator, and policies) intended for immediate prototyping and for producingopen, reproducible Zenodo artifacts. This document is engineering-focused: success or failure isdetermined by measured reductions in Scomp, tail-latency, and anchoring events under controlledworkloads