Today I set up the base Next.js project with TypeScript, Tailwind, and the App Router. I also installed the libraries I’ll need later for the 3D simulator and charts, like Three.js, React Three Fiber, Drei, Chart.js, Framer Motion, and Lucide.

I ran into a small issue at the start because npm package names can’t have capital letters, so I had to create the project folder as “exosim” instead of “ExoSim”. After that I got the dev server running locally and made my first small edit to the starter page.

I also pushed the project to GitHub, so now the repo is connected to my Stardance project. Next I’m going to start turning the default page into the actual ExoSim space-themed UI.