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.