diff --git a/tools/varve/check-drift.sh b/tools/varve/check-drift.sh
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..6108845
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tools/varve/check-drift.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,57 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env bash
+# Report toolchain DRIFT across the three places a jess tool version can come from,
+# and fail if they disagree.
+#
+# WHY THIS EXISTS: on 2026-08-27 jess filed meld#390 against meld 0.41.3 while 0.52.0
+# was latest — eleven minor versions — and nothing noticed, because the three sources
+# below were never compared to each other:
+#
+#   (1) PATH        what a developer (or an agent) actually runs locally
+#   (2) varve pin   what varve.toml says this project is qualified against
+#   (3) ci.yml env  what CI actually downloads and runs
+#
+# All three disagreed. A pin that nothing checks is decoration, so this is the check.
+# See AFD-045.
+set -uo pipefail
+ROOT="$(cd "$(dirname "$0")/../.." && pwd -P)"
+CI="$ROOT/.github/workflows/ci.yml"
+drift=0
+
+ci_pin() { # tool -> the version ci.yml downloads, or empty
+  local var; var="$(printf '%s' "$1" | tr '[:lower:]' '[:upper:]')_VERSION"
+  sed -n "s/^[[:space:]]*${var}:[[:space:]]*v\{0,1\}\([0-9][^[:space:]]*\).*/\1/p" "$CI" | head -1
+}
+ver() { "$@" --version 2>/dev/null | head -1 | grep -oE '[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+' | head -1; }
+
+printf '%-8s  %-12s  %-12s  %-12s  %s\n' TOOL PATH VARVE-PIN CI-YML STATUS
+for t in rivet spar meld synth loom sigil; do
+  p="$(ver "$t")"
+  v="$(varve run "$t" --version 2>/dev/null | head -1 | grep -oE '[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+' | head -1)"
+  c="$(ci_pin "$t")"
+  # Compare only the sources that actually exist. A tool absent from a source is not
+  # drift — spar is legitimately not on this machine's PATH, and not every tool is
+  # pinned in ci.yml. Treating absence as disagreement would make this cry wolf.
+  seen=(); [ -n "$p" ] && seen+=("$p"); [ -n "$v" ] && seen+=("$v"); [ -n "$c" ] && seen+=("$c")
+  uniq_n=$(printf '%s\n' "${seen[@]:-}" | sort -u | grep -c . || true)
+  # A tool present in NO source is "absent", not "ok". Scoring it ok would be a vacuous
+  # pass — it reports agreement where nothing was compared, which is how a checker ends
+  # up green on a toolchain it never looked at.
+  if   [ "${uniq_n:-0}" -eq 0 ]; then st="absent (not checked)"
+  elif [ "${uniq_n:-0}" -eq 1 ]; then st="ok"
+  else st="DRIFT"; drift=1; fi
+  printf '%-8s  %-12s  %-12s  %-12s  %s\n' "$t" "${p:--}" "${v:--}" "${c:--}" "$st"
+done
+
+echo
+if [ "$drift" -ne 0 ]; then
+  cat <<'MSG'
+DRIFT: at least one tool resolves to different versions depending on where you look.
+Reconcile before reporting any result upstream — a defect report cites a version, and
+a wrong citation costs a supplier's attention (AFD-045, meld#390).
+  varve run <tool> ...   runs the PINNED binary regardless of PATH
+  varve verify           re-checks the pinned layer and reports PATH shadowing
+MSG
+  exit 1
+fi
+echo "no drift: every tool agrees across the sources that define it."
+echo "(rows marked 'absent (not checked)' were compared against nothing — they are not evidence.)"
diff --git a/varve-realms.toml b/varve-realms.toml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51971f9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/varve-realms.toml
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+# Canonical realm definitions for the PulseEngine toolchain.
+# Commit this beside your varve.toml (or above it); `realm = "pulseengine"`
+# in the pin then needs no environment variable — the realm supplies both
+# the registry and the trust root, and the realm's root is authoritative.
+#
+# The rolling root is PROVISIONAL until the v1.0 ceremony (see SECURITY.md);
+# the rolling channel makes no qualification promise.
+
+[realm.pulseengine]
+registry   = "oci://ghcr.io/pulseengine/varve/layers"
+trust-root = "4e771dc62a08be89e3450f8cd807da58ff70af4a4e124ebf2d2b71684cfd9973"
diff --git a/varve.toml b/varve.toml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f3683e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/varve.toml
@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+# jess's toolchain pin.
+#
+# WHY THIS EXISTS, concretely: on 2026-08-27 jess filed an upstream defect report
+# (meld#390) against meld 0.41.3 while 0.52.0 was latest — ELEVEN minor versions
+# stale. Nothing detected the drift, because nothing was pinned: the local binary
+# came from PATH and CI pinned its own separate versions in ci.yml. That cost a
+# supplier's attention on a report whose version citation was wrong. See AFD-045.
+#
+# The realm supplies both the registry and the trust root, so no environment
+# variable is needed; varve-realms.toml is committed beside this file.
+manifest-version = 1
+
+[toolchain]
+realm   = "pulseengine"
+channel = "rolling"
+layer   = "2026.08.4"
+# The layer NAME is not sufficient on its own: two entries for 2026.08.4 exist in this
+# realm under different digests, and varve refuses to guess between them rather than
+# silently picking one. That refusal is the feature. This digest is the one `varve
+# install` fetched and verified against the realm's trust root on 2026-08-27.
+digest  = "sha256:c1e6a418f87dedfb97caca3d983cb7a17b3365492f66de920487a8470f064fe1"