I love that with Go I can build a simple statically build CLI tool that I can just run without installing anything else. Is there an equivalent ability to do that with Kotlin?

That is exactly what Kotlin/Native for. See pinned link to repo

Great! That is what I had assumed kotlin-native was for (and why I came to this channel). I’ve never done any C programming. So I’m trying to find a sample or write up (or blog post) that demonstrates that. Perhaps the CSV parser sample? (https://github.com/JetBrains/kotlin-native/tree/master/samples/csvparser)

See https://kotlinlang.org/docs/tutorials/native/basic-kotlin-native-app.html. There will be more in the same section.