This is a good place to mention https://nuitka.net/ which aims to compile python programs into standalone binaries.
For reference, I kept notes on the exact commands I used: https://github.com/9001/copyparty/blob/hovudstraum/docs/nuit...
Wrote a simple program to which I added Fire to parse arguments as a CLI, and Gooey/Tkinter for a GUI on top of it. To get a working standalone .exe file which does not require folders on the side, Pyinstaller did the job. Unfortunately it also triggers antivirus scans for some AVs..
python -m nuitka example.py --no-compile
Might be interesting to see if the above is possible. We could get things like a completely-statically-compiled Python stdlib within the APE.