Structural Coherence Evaluation for Physical Theories: A Theory-Agnostic Framework with Observation-Native Ontology and Self-Imposed Falsifiability

We introduce a theory-agnostic structural evaluation framework for physical theories that operates independently of shared ontologies or model-specific likelihoods. The framework formalizes four operational principles (observation-native ontology, declared structural vulnerability, priced adaptation, primitive transparency) and implements five structural coherence metrics (explanatory compression, anomaly burden, plasticity, layer consistency, forbidden pattern coverage). It encodes theory structure, versioning, and evaluations in a graph-based model designed to make theoretical commitments explicit, auditable, and comparable.The framework also introduces self-imposed falsifiability via “forbidden patterns,” making falsification a prospective, machine-checkable property. We demonstrate application across contrasting cosmological programmes including ΛCDM, modified gravity, and entropy-gradient approaches. The result is reproducible infrastructure for epistemically fair cross-theory comparison and transparent structural accountability.