When I run dotnet sdk releases from an arbitrary directory I keep getting: The system cannot find the path specified.

I do think that the issue is related to the fact that "tools" folder is being referenced via relative .\tools and the command works fine only when it is called from the root of the scripts.

The solution here would be to take script path into account. Something like this:

SET script_path=%~dp0 
SET tools_path=%script_path%tools
...
 %tools_path%\curl %dotnet_releases_url% -H "Accept: application/json" -s |  %tools_path%\jq "map({date: .date,sdk: .\"version-sdk\"}) | unique_by(.sdk) | .[] | \"\(.date)\t\(.sdk)\" " -r

Will provide a PR shortly