. (dot) directories are used for hiding application settings, etc. the instructions want users to keep the .nostr directory in the user's home directory. it's best practice to keep docker container settings inside of the container's directory. i.e. all files for nostr-ts-relay would exist in /nostr-ts-relay/ and the settings.json would be in /nostr-ts-relay/.nostr/settings.json and not /home/username/.nostr/.