I mean, for most tools it would be pretty easy to look at .config/ first and then at the project root - and print something about the new best practice. The wh

I mean, for most tools it would be pretty easy to look at .config/ first and then at the project root - and print something about the new best practice. The whole thing is a little uncomfortable though. There is a clear isomorphism between the contents of the structure of, say, a JSON file, and the contents of a directory of structured text files (and other directories). Heck, you could build a little tool with a slider that moves all the data between a single file, and a deep directory hierarchy with lots of tiny text files as the leaves. Personally I feel like the best solution is to somehow "indelibly" combine the tool with its config within a project, de facto removing all config options from the developer. In the worst case, it could be something as silly as a wrapper script with config embedded in there. Of course this is a kind of fiction, but a useful one. It feels nice to get to a point where you don't have to think about tooling. (The last time for me was like 2000).