The following is a script that adds empties to vertices. Each empty is parented to a vertex. Since I know nothing of scripting would it be easy to replace the empties with a 2 boned armature that I created? It needs to be duplicated each time instead of being added.

```
import bpy
import bmesh

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
obj = context.edit_object
mesh = obj.data
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(mesh)
empties = []
# selected verts
for v in [v for v in bm.verts if v.select]:
    empty = bpy.data.objects.new("Empty", None)
    empty.parent = obj
    empty.parent_type = 'VERTEX'
    empty.parent_vertices = [v.index] * 3
    scene.objects.link(empty)
    empty.matrix_parent_inverse.identity()
    empties.append((v.index, empty))

```