In this episode, we kick things off by setting up both our API and client projects, getting everything ready for the rest of the course. We start with creating a new directory for our projects, and then set up a fresh Laravel project for the API. During the Laravel setup, we skip the starter kit and testing frameworks (to keep things streamlined), choose MySQL for the database, and run the default migrations. Once that's done, we make sure the API is up and running by pinging it locally—if you see a response, you're good to go!

Next, we move on to creating the client app using Nuxt. We scaffold out a new Nuxt project (calling it "client", though you can name it whatever you like), pick NPM as the package manager, and keep things simple by skipping Git repo initialization. Once both projects are created, we open them up in an editor so we can easily switch between them.

With both projects ready, we run the Nuxt dev server and see the default welcome page in our browser, signaling that everything is working. To wrap up, we clean up the Nuxt starter page, remove dev tools, and make sure we're starting with a truly blank slate. Now, we're set up and ready for the next steps—coming up, we'll look at how to get both projects running under the same domain, which is going to be crucial later on!