Files disagree about skeleton or clip identity

Two deliveries that were supposed to be the same character import as different skeletons, or a report says Take 001 and nobody can tell which of the thirty files in the pack it came from.

Commands: animsmith inspect · animsmith collection lint

Why it happens

Marketplace packs commonly ship one clip per file and reuse an embedded take name such as Take 001 across every one of them, so a clip's display name is not an identifier. Skeletons drift the same way: two exports of "the same" rig can differ in hierarchy or rest signature and stop being exact-skeleton interchangeable. Both are properties of a set of files, and AnimSmith's ordinary checks resolve clips inside one loaded document — so this symptom is answered by retaining identity, not by a check firing.

What AnimSmith measures

There is no chart here, because the evidence is identity rather than motion. inspect reports the exact skeleton and the embedded clip names of one physical file, and a collection manifest binds each (file, clip) pair to a logical id that survives the display name.

The repository's own collection-boundary fixtures are shaped like the marketplace case: walk-a.gltf and walk-b.gltf are distinct physical files with identical bytes and the same embedded name.

$ animsmith inspect crates/animsmith/testdata/collection-spike/source/walk-a.gltf
crates/animsmith/testdata/collection-spike/source/walk-a.gltf
rig profile: none detected
skeleton: 1 bones
  root
materials: 0
mesh instances: 0
clips: 1
  Take 001: 0.000s, 0 tracks, 0 keys max   # exits 0

$ animsmith inspect crates/animsmith/testdata/collection-spike/source/walk-b.gltf
crates/animsmith/testdata/collection-spike/source/walk-b.gltf
rig profile: none detected
skeleton: 1 bones
  root
materials: 0
mesh instances: 0
clips: 1
  Take 001: 0.000s, 0 tracks, 0 keys max   # exits 0

Two files, one name. A third file in the same set carries Take 001 and Take 002, so even the take index is only meaningful together with its file:

$ animsmith inspect crates/animsmith/testdata/collection-spike/source/multi.gltf
crates/animsmith/testdata/collection-spike/source/multi.gltf
rig profile: none detected
skeleton: 1 bones
  root
materials: 0
mesh instances: 0
clips: 2
  Take 001: 0.000s, 0 tracks, 0 keys max
  Take 002: 0.000s, 0 tracks, 0 keys max   # exits 0

What the evidence looks like

A collection manifest is what turns those rows into stable identities: each source keeps its safe locator and expected digest, and each logical clip names the source plus the exact take index and embedded name it came from.

[[sources]]
key = "walk-a"
path = "walk-a.gltf"
config = "fixture.animsmith.toml"
expected_sha256 = "277f55812602cc560dbb432dede43bb145b3caa6cb90493675442a8f5499f044"

[[clips]]
id = "com.example.collection-spike/locomotion/walk-a"
source = "walk-a"
take_index = 0
take_name = "Take 001"

animsmith collection lint runs every declared source and emits that retained binding as machine-readable evidence — the source digest, the config basis, the observed takes, and the runtime sets that cross file boundaries. The fixture set above is the worked example, and collection contracts is the reference.

What to do

1. Record the physical file, not the display name. A runtime-set member must preserve the exact source path plus the embedded clip name and index. Normalized display names are not reproducible identifiers.
2. Reconcile the pack's own list separately. State it as a separate fact when a bundled animation list uses different spelling, casing, or ranges from the files; do not silently rename to make them match.
3. Do not force a skeleton reference. A copied-avatar or skeleton-reference hierarchy mismatch means the referenced mapping is not evidence for that file. Use a compatible individual asset, or obtain an authoritative re-export.
4. Keep retargeting a separate decision. An engine humanoid or retarget profile may still make two hierarchies compatible, but only after every required chain maps and the target character's deformation, transitions, masks, sockets and root ownership pass in the intended runtime.

Who fixes it: the pack owner and the pipeline that ingests it. AnimSmith retains identity and reports what each file actually contains; it does not merge, rename, or infer set membership, and it does not retarget. The gate closes when the recorded source-to-target mapping is complete and the target character plays the intended clips with visual evidence.

Config

Identity lives in the collection manifest rather than in animsmith.toml. Every source keeps its own document-local config, so declaring a set never changes what a single file means:

schema = "urn:animsmith:schema:collection-manifest:1"
schema_version = 1
collection_id = "com.example.collection-spike"
input_root = "source"

[[runtime_sets]]
id = "com.example.collection-spike/sets/cross-file-gait"
kind = "gait-group"
members = [
  "com.example.collection-spike/locomotion/walk-a",
  "com.example.collection-spike/locomotion/walk-b",
]