First and foremost, you need to install biotope either as global package:
npm i biotope -g
After that you can use the biotope commandline tool to start a new biotope project.
Setting up your first biotope instance, you should just trust the cli tool to setup your project. Just run:
biotope create [project-name]
This command will ask you some questions and create a new biotope-boilerplate instance.
After the tool is done, you can change directory to the newly generated biotope instance and run it:
cd [project-name]
npm start
After starting your project, if you've chosen the empty instance, you should see an empty overview page.
Now to add your first component, just run
biotope generate
After asking you some questions, a new component will be created and ready to be developed. After that, you can go into the newly generated files an change them at your will.