diff --git a/.gitlab-ci.yml b/.gitlab-ci.yml
index b909769..c29556e 100644
--- a/.gitlab-ci.yml
+++ b/.gitlab-ci.yml
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-image: eclipse-temurin:21
+image: eclipse-temurin:25
 
 stages:
     - build
@@ -21,10 +21,10 @@
   artifacts:
     paths:
       - app/build/libs/korapxmltool-*.jar
-      - app/build/libs/korapxmltool
+      - build/bin/korapxmltool
   cache:
     key: "$CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME"
     policy: push
     paths:
       - build
-      - .gradle
+      - .gradle
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/Readme.md b/Readme.md
index 13f87d1..a86dab9 100644
--- a/Readme.md
+++ b/Readme.md
@@ -16,10 +16,12 @@
 ./gradlew build
 ```
 
+After building, the executable will be available at `./build/bin/korapxmltool`.
+
 ## Conversion to [CoNLL-U format](https://universaldependencies.org/format.html)
 
 ```shell script
-$ java  -jar ./app/build/libs/korapxmltool.jar app/src/test/resources/wdf19.zip | head -10
+$ ./build/bin/korapxmltool app/src/test/resources/wdf19.zip | head -10
 
 # foundry = base
 # filename = WDF19/A0000/13072/base/tokens.xml
@@ -37,7 +39,7 @@
 ## Conversion to language model training data input format from KorAP-XML
 
 ```shell script
-$ java  -jar ./app/build/libs/korapxmltool.jar --word2vec t/data/wdf19.zip
+$ ./build/bin/korapxmltool --word2vec t/data/wdf19.zip
 
 Arts visuels Pourquoi toujours vouloir séparer BD et Manga ?
 Ffx 18:20 fév 25 , 2003 ( CET ) soit on ne sépara pas , soit alors on distingue aussi , le comics , le manwa , le manga ..
@@ -50,7 +52,7 @@
 ### Example producing language model training input with preceding metadata columns
 
 ```shell script
-java  -jar ./app/build/libs/korapxmltool.jar  -m '<textSigle>([^<]+)' -m '<creatDate>([^<]+)' --word2vec t/data/wdf19.zip
+./build/bin/korapxmltool -m '<textSigle>([^<]+)' -m '<creatDate>([^<]+)' --word2vec t/data/wdf19.zip
 ```
 ```
 WDF19/A0000.10894	2014.08.28	Arts visuels Pourquoi toujours vouloir séparer BD et Manga ?
@@ -65,7 +67,7 @@
 One text per line with `<p>` as sentence delimiter.
 
 ```shell script
-java -jar korapxmltool.jar -f now /vol/corpora/DeReKo/current/KorAP/zip/*24.zip | pv > dach24.txt
+./build/bin/korapxmltool -f now /vol/corpora/DeReKo/current/KorAP/zip/*24.zip | pv > dach24.txt
 ```
 
 ### Using lemmas instead of surface forms in word2vec / NOW output
@@ -74,10 +76,10 @@
 
 ```shell script
 # Word2Vec style output with lemmas where available
-java -jar ./app/build/libs/korapxmltool.jar --lemma -f w2v app/src/test/resources/goe.tree_tagger.zip | head -3
+./build/bin/korapxmltool --lemma -f w2v app/src/test/resources/goe.tree_tagger.zip | head -3
 
 # NOW corpus style output with lemmas
-java -jar ./app/build/libs/korapxmltool.jar --lemma -f now app/src/test/resources/goe.tree_tagger.zip | head -1
+./build/bin/korapxmltool --lemma -f now app/src/test/resources/goe.tree_tagger.zip | head -1
 ```
 
 If a lemma for a token is missing (`_`) the surface form is used as fallback.
@@ -92,8 +94,8 @@
 Example for large NOW export with progress and exclusions:
 
 ```
-java -Xmx64G -XX:+UseG1GC -Djdk.util.zip.disableMemoryMapping=true -Djdk.util.zip.reuseInflater=true \
-     -jar korapxmltool.jar -l info --threads 100 --zip-parallelism 8 \
+KORAPXMLTOOL_XMX_MB=65536 KORAPXMLTOOL_JAVA_OPTS="-XX:+UseG1GC -Djdk.util.zip.disableMemoryMapping=true -Djdk.util.zip.reuseInflater=true" \
+     ./build/bin/korapxmltool -l info --threads 100 --zip-parallelism 8 \
      --lemma-only --sequential -f now \
      --exclude-zip-glob 'w?d24.tree_tagger.zip' \
      /vol/corpora/DeReKo/current/KorAP/zip/*24.tree_tagger.zip | pv > dach2024.lemma.txt
@@ -108,7 +110,7 @@
 Generate a tar archive containing gzipped Krill/KoralQuery JSON files across all provided foundries.
 
 ```shell script
-java -jar ./app/build/libs/korapxmltool.jar -f krill -D out/krill \
+./build/bin/korapxmltool -f krill -D out/krill \
   app/src/test/resources/wud24_sample.zip \
   app/src/test/resources/wud24_sample.spacy.zip \
   app/src/test/resources/wud24_sample.marmot-malt.zip
@@ -123,14 +125,14 @@
 You need to download the pre-trained MarMoT models from the [MarMoT models repository](http://cistern.cis.lmu.de/marmot/models/CURRENT/).
 
 ```shell script
-java -jar ./app/build/libs/korapxmltool.jar -f zip -t marmot:models/de.marmot app/src/test/resources/goe.zip
+./build/bin/korapxmltool -f zip -t marmot:models/de.marmot app/src/test/resources/goe.zip
 ```
 
 ### Tagging with integrated OpenNLP POS tagger directly to a new KorAP-XML ZIP file
 
 You need to download the pre-trained OpenNLP models from the [OpenNLP model download page](https://opennlp.apache.org/models.html#part_of_speech_tagging) or older models from the [legacy OpenNLP models archive](http://opennlp.sourceforge.net/models-1.5/).
 ```shell script
-java -jar ./app/build/libs/korapxmltool.jar -f zip -t opennlp:/usr/local/kl/korap/Ingestion/lib/models/opennlp/de-pos-maxent.bin /tmp/zca24.zip
+./build/bin/korapxmltool -f zip -t opennlp:/usr/local/kl/korap/Ingestion/lib/models/opennlp/de-pos-maxent.bin /tmp/zca24.zip
 ```
 
 ### Tag and lemmatize with TreeTagger
@@ -139,7 +141,7 @@
 Language models are downloaded automatically.
 
 ```shell script
-java  -jar app/build/libs/korapxmltool.jar app/src/test/resources/wdf19.zip | docker run --rm -i korap/conllu2treetagger -l french | conllu2korapxml
+./build/bin/korapxmltool app/src/test/resources/wdf19.zip | docker run --rm -i korap/conllu2treetagger -l french | conllu2korapxml
 ```
 
 ### Tag and lemmatize with spaCy directly to a new KorAP-XML ZIP file
@@ -147,13 +149,13 @@
 This requires the [spaCy Docker Image with CoNLL-U Support](https://gitlab.ids-mannheim.de/KorAP/sota-pos-lemmatizers) and is only available for German.
 
 ```shell script
-java  -jar app/build/libs/korapxmltool.jar -T4 -A "docker run -e SPACY_USE_DEPENDENCIES=False --rm -i korap/conllu2spacy:latest 2> /dev/null" -f zip ./app/src/test/resources/goe.zip
+./build/bin/korapxmltool -T4 -A "docker run -e SPACY_USE_DEPENDENCIES=False --rm -i korap/conllu2spacy:latest 2> /dev/null" -f zip ./app/src/test/resources/goe.zip
 ```
 
 ### Tag, lemmatize and dependency parse with spaCy directly to a new KorAP-XML ZIP file
 
 ```shell script
-java  -jar app/build/libs/korapxmltool.jar -T4 -A "docker run -e SPACY_USE_DEPENDENCIES=True --rm -i korap/conllu2spacy:latest 2> /dev/null" -f zip ./app/src/test/resources/goe.zip
+./build/bin/korapxmltool -T4 -A "docker run -e SPACY_USE_DEPENDENCIES=True --rm -i korap/conllu2spacy:latest 2> /dev/null" -f zip ./app/src/test/resources/goe.zip
 ```
 
 ### Tag, lemmatize and constituency parse with CoreNLP (3.X) directly to a new KorAP-XML ZIP file
@@ -161,7 +163,7 @@
 Download the Stanford CoreNLP v3.X POS tagger and constituency parser models (e.g., `german-fast.tagger` and `germanSR.ser.gz`) into `libs/`.
 
 ```shell script
-java -jar ./app/build/libs/korapxmltool.jar -f zip -D out \
+./build/bin/korapxmltool -f zip -D out \
   -t corenlp:libs/german-fast.tagger \
   -P corenlp:libs/germanSR.ser.gz \
   app/src/test/resources/wud24_sample.zip
@@ -175,12 +177,12 @@
 Note that parsers take POS tagged input.
 
 ```shell script
-java -jar ./app/build/libs/korapxmltool.jar -f zip -T2 -P malt:libs/german.mco goe.tree_tagger.zip
+./build/bin/korapxmltool -f zip -T2 -P malt:libs/german.mco goe.tree_tagger.zip
 ```
 
 ### Tag with MarMoT and parse with Maltparser in one run directly to a new KorAP-XML ZIP file
 ```shell script
-java -jar ./app/build/libs/korapxmltool.jar -f zip -t marmot:models/de.marmot -P malt:libs/german.mco goe.zip
+./build/bin/korapxmltool -f zip -t marmot:models/de.marmot -P malt:libs/german.mco goe.zip
 ```
 
 ## Development and License
diff --git a/app/build.gradle b/app/build.gradle
index 8ae215f..0fad0bc 100644
--- a/app/build.gradle
+++ b/app/build.gradle
@@ -144,7 +144,11 @@
 tasks.register('assembleShebangExecutable') {
     dependsOn shadowJar
     inputs.file(rootProject.file("korapxmltool.shebang"))
-    outputs.file(new File(shadowJar.archiveFile.get().asFile.parent, "korapxmltool"))
+    inputs.file(shadowJar.archiveFile)
+    
+    def binDir = rootProject.file("build/bin")
+    def targetExec = new File(binDir, "korapxmltool")
+    outputs.file(targetExec)
 
     doLast {
         def shebang = rootProject.file("korapxmltool.shebang")
@@ -152,8 +156,10 @@
             throw new GradleException("Missing shebang stub: ${shebang}")
         }
 
+        // Ensure bin directory exists
+        binDir.mkdirs()
+
         def targetJar = shadowJar.archiveFile.get().asFile
-        def targetExec = new File(targetJar.parent, "korapxmltool")
 
         targetExec.withOutputStream { os ->
             os << shebang.bytes
@@ -164,6 +170,11 @@
     }
 }
 
+tasks.named('assemble') {
+    dependsOn createJarSymlink
+    dependsOn assembleShebangExecutable
+}
+
 tasks.named('build') {
     dependsOn createJarSymlink
     dependsOn assembleShebangExecutable