That is what mise from the same author is for. It lets you define per-project sets of tools with specific versions (including languages). I find it quite useful and I'm planning to get my team at work to adopt it once I get some round tuits.

I would use a wrapper sh script that checks for the tool and prompts an install, basically how Java projects include maven or gradle into a repo

One of the goal of hk is to be used with mise (https://mise.jdx.dev/dev-tools/)

mise supports an experimental bootstrapping feature: it can download itself and install the tools required for the project.

See https://mise.jdx.dev/cli/generate/bootstrap.html and https://mise.jdx.dev/continuous-integration.html#bootstrappi...