diff --git a/.claude/skills/character-pipeline/SKILL.md b/.claude/skills/character-pipeline/SKILL.md
index b917528..f02ab88 100644
--- a/.claude/skills/character-pipeline/SKILL.md
+++ b/.claude/skills/character-pipeline/SKILL.md
@@ -250,11 +250,29 @@ The six in `skins.json`, with what `surface_class_check` reports:
   still runs its legs ~40° off the direction of travel.
 - **momo's idle pose is wrong** — arms overhead and a pinched waist. Every
   assertion passes on her: she loads, animates, classifies and mounts a weapon.
-  It shows up only in `roster_capture`. Her source rig is the reason to suspect —
-  its bones are auto-named (`Item_O_Sphere_005`, `Unused_Noname_004`,
-  `Root_001_001`), so the role resolver has almost nothing to go on, and a limb
-  role claimed by the wrong bone would look exactly like this. Start by dumping
-  her resolved roles against her skeleton.
+  It shows up only in `roster_capture`.
+
+  **Diagnosed, not fixed.** Her `driven_bones` contains `Root_001` through
+  `Root_007` — and those are her HAIR roots. The Godot surface dump shows
+  `Hair_A` dominated by `Root_001_001:3203`, `Root_007:3203`, `Root_005:2642`.
+  So the animation is keying bones that physics is supposed to own, which is
+  non-negotiable #2 being violated by the role resolver rather than by a clip.
+  The corroboration is in the surface table: her hair surfaces report only 1.8%
+  and 9.4% chain share, because most of their vertices belong to `Root_00N`,
+  which is in no chain at all.
+
+  `Root_00N` matches no COSMETIC stem, so `is_cosmetic` does not catch it and
+  nothing keeps it out of the driven set. Fixing it by adding "root" to the
+  stems would be wrong — a rig whose actual root is called `Root` would lose its
+  hips. The fix is structural: a bone whose geometry is dominated by a mesh
+  classified `hair` is a hair bone, whatever it is called. The surface table
+  now makes that answerable at build time, which it was not when this rig was
+  imported. Not attempted here — it needs a Blender re-run and re-verification
+  of all six characters.
+
+  Her `head` role is also wrong (`Unused_Noname_010`, when a real `Head` bone
+  exists and is in her spine chain), and her spine chain runs two junk bones
+  PAST the head. Probably the same import; worth fixing in the same pass.
 - **A stray `Icosphere` ships inside every skin GLB** — 42 vertices, no parent,
   no vertex groups. It rides in from the animation library. Harmless, and now
   skipped by construction rather than by name in `surface_map`, but the export
diff --git a/.claude/skills/character-pipeline/references/verification.md b/.claude/skills/character-pipeline/references/verification.md
index 7a3cf75..a02a174 100644
--- a/.claude/skills/character-pipeline/references/verification.md
+++ b/.claude/skills/character-pipeline/references/verification.md
@@ -47,6 +47,22 @@ Two related traps:
 | `anim_capture.gd` / `orbit_capture.gd` | renders, for looking | — |
 | `roster_capture.gd` | one photo of every character, from the picker | — |
 | `ui_capture.gd` | one photo of every menu screen | — |
+| `rest_pose_check.gd` | each rig's bind-pose limb directions vs. the library's | see below |
+
+## What `rest_pose_check` actually established
+
+It was written to test a suspicion — that the rest-relative retarget silently
+assumes both rigs rest alike — and it disproved it. Miku's arms rest **41°** off
+the animation library's and Taila's **32°**, and both animate correctly. The
+delta retarget handles a rest-pose difference, which is what it is for. Do not
+go looking there again.
+
+It also demonstrates the measurement trap in miniature. Written as "the direction
+from a bone to its FIRST CHILD", it reported kiyoko's and aria's legs 71° off —
+because a thigh's first child is as likely to be a skirt bone as a shin, and it
+was measuring the hang of a skirt panel. Pointing it at the next limb BY ROLE
+dropped both to 1°. The same rule as everywhere else in this pipeline: resolve
+roles, never take whatever the rig happens to hand you.
 
 ## Assert the consequence, not the plumbing
 
diff --git a/debug/rest_pose_check.gd b/debug/rest_pose_check.gd
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..edf1478
--- /dev/null
+++ b/debug/rest_pose_check.gd
@@ -0,0 +1,109 @@
+extends SceneTree
+
+## Which way does each character's REST pose point their limbs?
+##
+## The retarget bakes every clip as a rest-relative delta: it works out what the
+## clip does to the LIBRARY's rest pose and applies that rotation to THIS rig's
+## rest pose. That is what stops a foreign bone roll twisting a limb, and it is
+## right — but it carries an assumption nobody has checked, which is that the two
+## rest poses are broadly alike. If a character's arms rest overhead and the
+## library's rest at its sides, then "what the clip does relative to the sides"
+## applied to overhead leaves the arms overhead, in every clip, forever.
+##
+## So: measure it. For each character, the world-space direction each limb points
+## in its BIND pose, and the angle between that and the library's.
+##
+##     godot --headless --path . -s res://debug/rest_pose_check.gd
+
+## limb role -> the role of the bone it points AT. Not "its first child": a
+## thigh's first child is as likely to be a skirt bone as a shin, and taking it
+## reported kiyoko's and aria's legs as 71° off the library when their legs are
+## fine — it was measuring the hang of a skirt panel.
+const LIMBS := {
+	"upper_arm.L": "forearm.L", "upper_arm.R": "forearm.R",
+	"forearm.L": "hand.L", "forearm.R": "hand.R",
+	"thigh.L": "shin.L", "thigh.R": "shin.R",
+	"shin.L": "foot.L", "shin.R": "foot.R",
+}
+## The reference is the mannequin: it comes from the animation library itself, so
+## its rest pose IS the pose every clip was authored against.
+const REFERENCE := "mannequin"
+
+
+func _init() -> void:
+	await process_frame
+	var data = JSON.parse_string(FileAccess.get_file_as_string(
+		"res://assets/characters/skins/skins.json"))
+
+	var dirs := {}
+	for entry in data["skins"]:
+		var d := _limb_directions(entry.get("model", ""))
+		if not d.is_empty():
+			dirs[entry["id"]] = d
+
+	var ref: Dictionary = dirs.get(REFERENCE, {})
+	print("Rest-pose limb directions, and the angle from the animation library's own rig\n")
+	for id in dirs:
+		var parts: PackedStringArray = []
+		var worst := 0.0
+		for limb in LIMBS:
+			if not dirs[id].has(limb) or not ref.has(limb):
+				continue
+			var v: Vector3 = dirs[id][limb]
+			var deg := rad_to_deg(v.angle_to(ref[limb]))
+			worst = maxf(worst, deg)
+			parts.append("%s %3.0f°" % [limb, deg])
+		parts.sort()
+		print("%-10s worst %5.1f°   %s" % [id, worst, "  ".join(parts)])
+	print("\nA limb tens of degrees from the reference will play every clip with")
+	print("that offset baked in, because the clip only ever supplied the DELTA.")
+	quit()
+
+
+## limb role -> the unit vector the bone points along, in bind pose, in the
+## model's own space.
+##
+## Read from the sidecar's roles, never by bone name — a rig whose bones are
+## called `Unused_Noname_010` is exactly the case this has to survive.
+func _limb_directions(path: String) -> Dictionary:
+	if path == "" or not ResourceLoader.exists(path):
+		return {}
+	var rig = JSON.parse_string(FileAccess.get_file_as_string(
+		path.get_basename() + ".rig.json"))
+	if typeof(rig) != TYPE_DICTIONARY:
+		return {}
+	var scene: Node = load(path).instantiate()
+	var skel: Skeleton3D = _first_skeleton(scene)
+	var out := {}
+	if skel:
+		for limb in LIMBS:
+			var roles: Dictionary = rig.get("roles", {})
+			var from_name: String = roles.get(limb, "")
+			var to_name: String = roles.get(LIMBS[limb], "")
+			if from_name == "" or to_name == "":
+				continue
+			var bi := skel.find_bone(from_name)
+			var ti := skel.find_bone(to_name)
+			if bi < 0 or ti < 0:
+				continue
+			# Where the limb points: at the NEXT limb along, by role. A bone's
+			# own axes say nothing on their own — every rig rolls them
+			# differently, which is the whole reason the retarget works in
+			# deltas — so the direction has to come from the geometry.
+			var here := skel.get_bone_global_rest(bi).origin
+			var there := skel.get_bone_global_rest(ti).origin
+			var v := there - here
+			if v.length() > 1e-5:
+				out[limb] = v.normalized()
+	scene.free()
+	return out
+
+
+func _first_skeleton(node: Node) -> Skeleton3D:
+	if node is Skeleton3D:
+		return node
+	for c in node.get_children():
+		var f := _first_skeleton(c)
+		if f:
+			return f
+	return null