Here is a demo that embeds the a jbang script in a script file that can be distributed as a standalone and runs it with no dependencies. It's a simple Spring Boot application that uses a Java 25 anonymous main(). The dependencies are managed by jbang and are declared in the script header via a utility catalog in Github.

You can build it with make:

$ make
$ ./demo
  .   ____          _            __ _ _
 /\\ / ___'_ __ _ _(_)_ __  __ _ \ \ \ \
( ( )\___ | '_ | '_| | '_ \/ _` | \ \ \ \
 \\/  ___)| |_)| | | | | || (_| |  ) ) ) )
  '  |____| .__|_| |_|_| |_\__, | / / / /
 =========|_|==============|___/=/_/_/_/

 :: Spring Boot ::                (v3.5.5)

2025-09-18T15:03:49.543+01:00  INFO 1817375 --- [           main] script                                   : Starting script using Java 25-beta with PID 1817375 (/home/dsyer/.jbang/cache/jars/script.java.20f0ef5cc326d3b8fc241c3e19489da24feed1c86f571bc916d4557ca409c970/script.jar started by dsyer in /home/dsyer/dev/scratch/jbang-demo)
2025-09-18T15:03:49.545+01:00  INFO 1817375 --- [           main] script                                   : No active profile set, falling back to 1 default profile: "default"
2025-09-18T15:03:49.808+01:00  INFO 1817375 --- [           main] script                                   : Started script in 0.454 seconds (process running for 0.591)
Hello, World!

Alternatively (during development for instance) you can run the script directly with:

$ ./jbang demo.sh

or if jbang is already installed (or this directory is on your PATH):

$ ./demo.sh

Java 17

It also would work with older versions of Java (that don't have the anonymous main feature). The demo.sh would need to be renamed demo.jsh (for JShell) and the main method would just be a fragment of code rather than a complete method:

///usr/bin/env jbang "$0" "$@" ; exit $?
//SOURCES springbom@scratches
//SOURCES generic@scratches
//JAVA 17

import org.springframework.boot.CommandLineRunner;
import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;

@Configuration class Demo {

	@Bean
	CommandLineRunner runner() {
		return args -> System.out.println("Hello, World!");
	}

}

new SpringApplication(GenericApplication.class, Demo.class).run(args);

Then the Makefile would need to be adjusted to use *.jsh instead of *.sh.