A modern programming language that makes developers happier.

kotlinlang

this may sound "full-circle", please point me to references on if I can compile a .kts to a jar with all the @file:DependsOn

There is no such functionality. And to be honest, composing a fat jar doesn't seem to me like something that compiler need to address. Normally it is done with the external tools.
But the jar created with scripting host should normally contain correct `Class-Path` attribute, so it should be not that difficult to pack it with an external tool.

can you point me to such a tool that works _with_ *.main.kts?

No, unfortunately I have not investigated them for the task.

You can do so with kscipt. It allows compiling a script into a self-contained jar.