Craft Nitro PHP extension ext-zip * is missing I'm not particularly tech minded so MAMP has served me well for a good while.  However I more recently decided to give Craft Nitro a try.  I got everything (Multipass and Nitro) set up really easy.  I then went to create a project and got the error PHP extension ext-zip * is missing.  I've seen this before and worked around it guided by This post.
All good...  craft installed.   However, now i'm confused?  Why did I need to install an older version of PHP on my host machine (OSX) when Nitro is supposedly a self contained 'box' with everything needed for a Craft install?
You'll want to run that composer create-project command from inside of your Nitro VM. If you run it on your host machine, it'll use whatever version of PHP your host machine has installed.
Do this:

Make sure Composer is installed in the VM by running nitro install composer from the host machine. https://craftcms.com/docs/nitro/commands.html#install-composer

SSH into the box by running nitro ssh. https://craftcms.com/docs/nitro/commands.html#ssh

Run composer create-project craftcms/craft to get a fresh new Craft project inside the VM.