diff --git a/scripts/setup.sh b/scripts/setup.sh
index e4762c80..8715496e 100755
--- a/scripts/setup.sh
+++ b/scripts/setup.sh
@@ -614,10 +614,20 @@ else
   if has starship; then ok "starship installed"; else warn "starship install failed"; fi
 fi
 
-# Deploy starship config
+# Deploy starship config. Unconditionally cp'ing here overwrote a customised ~/.config/starship.toml on
+# every run, silently — the nvim step below already gets this right by guarding on the config's
+# existence, so this was just inconsistent. Converge when there is nothing to lose, keep what the user
+# wrote when there is.
 mkdir -p "$HOME/.config"
-cp "$SCRIPT_DIR/starship.toml" "$HOME/.config/starship.toml"
-ok "starship config deployed"
+STARSHIP_DEST="$HOME/.config/starship.toml"
+if [ ! -f "$STARSHIP_DEST" ]; then
+  cp "$SCRIPT_DIR/starship.toml" "$STARSHIP_DEST"
+  ok "starship config deployed"
+elif cmp -s "$SCRIPT_DIR/starship.toml" "$STARSHIP_DEST"; then
+  skip "starship config (already current)"
+else
+  skip "starship config (yours differs — kept; cp scripts/starship.toml ~/.config/ to take this one)"
+fi
 
 # Oh-My-Zsh
 if [ -d "$HOME/.oh-my-zsh" ]; then
@@ -866,18 +876,23 @@ fi
 echo ""
 echo "── Remote Desktop (Ubuntu Desktop + VNC) ──"
 
-if dpkg -s ubuntu-desktop &>/dev/null 2>&1; then
-  skip "remote desktop (ubuntu-desktop already installed)"
-else
-  case $PM in
-    apt)
-      bash "$SCRIPT_DIR/setup-desktop.sh"
-      ;;
-    *)
-      warn "Remote desktop setup is Ubuntu/Debian only — skipping"
-      ;;
-  esac
-fi
+# No "already installed" guard here on purpose. This used to skip on `dpkg -s ubuntu-desktop`, which
+# treats one package being present as proof the whole remote desktop is configured — and those are very
+# different things. A host can have ubuntu-desktop and still be missing every part that makes the mirror
+# work: GDM auto-login, the forced Xorg session, the captured EDID and its kernel command line, the
+# login-time mode setter. That was not hypothetical; it was this machine on 2026-08-02, where the guard
+# reported "skip" while five of setup-desktop.sh's steps had never run and /desktop could not survive a
+# reboot. setup-desktop.sh is idempotent throughout — every step either no-ops or is individually
+# guarded — so letting it run each time converges a partially configured host instead of trusting a
+# proxy for state it never actually checked.
+case $PM in
+  apt)
+    bash "$SCRIPT_DIR/setup-desktop.sh"
+    ;;
+  *)
+    warn "Remote desktop setup is Ubuntu/Debian only — skipping"
+    ;;
+esac
 
 # ─── 18. project initialization ──────────────────────────────────────────────
 echo ""