Next.js is a highly opinionated framework. "Our way or the highway" is what should be expected going in. Good luck if your requirements change later on, and I hope your code is transferrable to a new framework if needed.

Unfortunately, I have never need to follow "our way" because my projects are more complex than whatever basic blog setup they document. I always end up just building my own stack around Vite. I'm also not much of a fan of fighting against my tools when what I need isn't something the tool devs already thought of.

It always seemed more work than its worth. And the arbitrary rules drove me up the wall.

I just want to npm install <thing> and be one with it with very little or no setup.

I can do just that with fastapi/django/just about any other MVP framework thats been around 10+ years.