What Origin Strategies Cannot Avoid: A Diagnostic Protocol and Constraint Map for Cosmological Origin Claims

Abstract Cosmological origin claims—that a universe tunnels, bounces, emerges, or requires no beginning—are assessed within their home communities but lack a shared cross-programme standard for physical applicability. We develop a diagnostic protocol that evaluates whether an origin claim satisfies minimal applicability conditions (formal existence, modelability, regime specification) and, where it does not, identifies the structural source of failure via six diagnostic signatures. We apply the protocol to twelve strategies spanning seven strategy types—inflation, string landscape, Hartle-Hawking, Vilenkin tunneling, Aguirre-Gratton, Loop Quantum Cosmology, ekpyrotic/cyclic, Penrose CCC, causal sets, emergent gravity, Wheeler-DeWitt, and Causal Dynamical Triangulations. Ten strategies receive OPEN verdicts (active diagnostic pressure without resolution); two receive PASS* (regime-internal success with unresolved parent-theory dependencies). From the failure patterns we derive, via a directed signature–dimension–constraint chain (Sn → Dn → Cn), seven necessary conditions (C1–C7) for physically applicable origin explanations. C1 (starter-package disclosure) is violated across all twelve sampled strategies. A pairwise compatibility analysis shows that the constraints are logically co-satisfiable in principle but subject to two structural tensions—disclosure–regress (C1×C2) and measure–regress (C5×C2)—that constrain the space of satisfying proposals. No strategy in the sample satisfies C1–C7 jointly. The constraints are necessary, not sufficient: they define a diagnostic threshold, not a success criterion. Keywords: philosophy of cosmology; origin claims; diagnostic protocol; physical applicability; quantum gravity; initial conditions