Measurement as Record-Registration: A Locked-Null Protocol for Testing Record-Level Structure in Quantum Computing Readout

This manuscript presents a methods‑forward, operational protocol for evaluating record‑level structure in quantum‑computing measurement telemetry. Classical definiteness is defined at the record layer, and pre‑record states are treated as predictive descriptions rather than classical outcome facts. A locked null‑model family is specified and preregistered in advance, incorporating standard quantum dynamics together with correlated and documented non‑Markovian device effects. The protocol provides operational definitions, preregistered endpoints, residual‑adjudication criteria, negative controls, a fixed windowing discipline, and a bound‑first reporting standard designed to yield informative constraints under null results. Version 4.0 adds a fully specified synthetic demonstration that executes the protocol on controlled classical telemetry. The demonstration shows how the decision pipeline classifies a bounded‑null case, a measured‑artifact case, a partial‑artifact/unresolved‑covariate case, an injected structured‑residual case, and a failed‑topology case. The synthetic study establishes computational executability of the protocol and clarifies the behavior of the decision tree, but it does not constitute empirical evidence for any physical mechanism. Because the protocol relies only on standard measurement telemetry and preregistered analysis rules, it is directly implementable across contemporary quantum‑computing platforms and does not depend on any single dataset or hardware realization. The manuscript is a specification paper: it defines a reproducible evidentiary framework for record‑level claims, while large‑scale empirical implementation and hardware benchmarking remain subsequent studies.