The apparent missing mass in galaxies and galaxy clusters, commonly viewed as evidence for dark matter, could possibly originate from gradients in the gravitational coupling parameter, $G$, and active gravitational mass, $M_{act}$, rather than hypothetical beyond-the-standard-model particles. We argue that in (the weak field limit of) a Weyl-invariant extension of General Relativity, one can simply affect the change $\Phi_{b}(x)\rightarrow\Phi_{b}(x) + \Phi_{DM}(x)$, where $\Phi_{b}$ is the baryon-sourced potential and $\Phi_{DM}$ is the `excess' potential. This is compensated by gradients of $GM_{act}$ and a fractional increase of $O(-4\Phi_{DM}(x))$ in the baryon density, well below current detection thresholds on all relevant scales.
Comment: Matches published version