How to apply rig to mesh and keep the rig with its weights?

how to apply rig to mesh and keep the rig with its weights?

Like I can apply, I’ll lose my rig. I can clone rig, but as I apply the cloned rig will lose weights…

Anyone got the appropriate Workflow?

Not totally sure I know what you mean. Meshes have weights, rigs don’t. You can deform a mesh with as many different rigs at you want, all at the same, using the same or different vertex groups if you want…

If you want to parent a mesh to a rig without changing its weights, just ctrl p and select “armature deform”, no adjective necessary. Empty group parenting will do the same thing IIRC-- as in, if a group already exists, it won’t write into it. Finally, even parenting with automatic weights will refuse to write into any locked vertex groups.

Apply the armature modifier, apply the pose as rest pose with ctrl+A, add armature modifier again. Could also make a copy of the modifier before applying it.