I’m sure I’m not the only person who’s got uv configured to install the virtualenv in the local .venv folder

That’s the default for projects. Script is a different run mode.

every time I invoke the script, I’d get a new set of dependencies installed wherever I happen to be.

Does that happen though? uv uses the cache location for these script dependencies, not your usual venv one. Where you call it from is not a factor.