For the time being, all you need to do to run this project is install node.js. Leave all default options. It will give access to the node package manager (npm) which will be used to download all needed packages in the future.
While not required, using VS Code with the Live Server plugin will enable you to preview the website in a developer environment for easy visualization and debugging.
So far, in addition to node.js, we will be using react paired alongside bootstrap to handle all the front end stuff as well as Tensorflow.js to handle all the machine learning aspects. Tensorflow.js supports the conversion of existing python models, so compatibility should not be an issue