I hadn't appreciated that ~/.<appname> was an anti-pattern.

Do you have any resources / references on the alternative best-practice, please?

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Base_Directory

https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir/latest

originally published as a standard in 2003, apparently.

HTTP equivalent:

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8615

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well-known_URI