[9dev]

As these things go, there obviously is a standard for this called the XDG Base Directory Specification[0], which elegantly solves almost all configuration path needs—and has been ignored, violated, or only partially implemented, since forever.

[0]: https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir/latest/

[hollerith]

The problems this standard solves are not hard, and "elegant" is not how I'd describe the solution.

[amelius]

Say what you want about AI but one nice aspect of it is that it is more likely to follow these kinds of standards than humans.