Do repo housekeeping and modernization

[willingc]

To improve maintainability and implement current sensible practices, let's do a refresh of this repo.

Some steps to consider:

• modernize js
• implement Python best practices
• use recent versions of Python and node
• add automation to lint and run tests
• refresh readme badges
• run repo check from scientific python as an audit

The primary purpose beyond quality and security for this work is to put the repo in a good state prior to deduplicating work between this repo and hub-lite as discussed by @aganders3 @DragaDoncila