Cameron White

In the next Houdini release there are some new options on the Agent Layer SOP to remove shapes / layers from the agent definition. Currently that could likely be done in Python

Another option though, depending on your workflow, would just be to cache the joints on the USD side if that's what you need in the end anyways. e.g. using a SOP Import LOP with `Agents` set to `Create SkelAnimations`

I think this is coming from the Orientation Along Curve SOP - maybe there need to be some additional parms promoted like `Transform Using Point Attributes` so you can override the up vector and avoid twisting.
Could you submit an RFE?

This was very recently fixed upstream in USD (https://github.com/PixarAnimationStudios/OpenUSD/pull/3841) so I'd expect that to be available in the next major Houdini release

Another alternative workaround is using the crowd procedural, which has some options for baking out the skinning for all agents (equivalent to the Bake Skinning LOP) - this is done just at render time and for the relevant time range