I've just installed a fresh Raspberry OS on a Pi 2+/-, and uploaded pico-8. User pi. I am under the impression that it should be putting carts, config.txt, and other stuff here:

/home/pi/.lexaloffle/pico-8/

But it is empty, even after I've spun up splore, changed a few configs from inside the IDE, written and saved a program from inside the IDE, etc.. There is nothing there. It IS retaining config changes between boots, so I know it is keeping that info somewhere.

What super-obvious thing am I missing here?

Yours, etc.
garrison

Hmm, might be a bit late on this but PICO-8 saves its data to

home/pi/.lexaloffle/pico-8/

Try entering

folder

from the pico 8 command line and it should take you to the folder where PICO-8 is storing files, if that is still empty then let me know.