I am currently starting a project from scratch and I created it with composer, but I noticed there are some settings already in place, such as Sail, bootstrap.js, etc. I am unaware if these settings are essential do the project or if I am not able to create a truly empty project anyways
If you have ran composer create-project laravel/laravel <your project name> then it is an new empty project.
Sail is shipped by default with laravel and the bootstrap.js file isn't in any way connected to the Bootstrap framework, but rather a naming convention for files that are loaded by default. In this case it imports axios into your application.
@Tray2 First, thank you for your reply. But what if I do not want bootstrap.js to import axios into my project right away, is there an option for that?