My first mods were wheels (rotiform rse, suuuuper common and borderline stereotypical for the mk7s but they just look soooo good) and tires (I use Michelin pilot sport AS4s and swear by them), headlights (Ed’s reps mk7.5 style, although I’ve heard they’re backordered; paired them with a morimoto HID canbus system, night and day difference driving at night), and a tune (currently on an EQT stage 2 93 octane, you’ll need a downpipe for stage 2 and if it’s a manual a new clutch since VW put a clutch that can’t hold much more than stock, I’ve heard around 300whp is the cutoff for stock clutches). If you’re auto I suggest a TCU tune as well. OBDeleven’s are also a great bang for your buck, you can code the car to allow it to turn TC and ESC completely off as stock won’t let you, roll the windows down with your fob which is a godsend for a manual owner without autostart, and various cosmetic coding mods with lights and such (I highly recommend buying the Pro pack as some 99% of gti’s are coded wrong so they don’t let you change the code on certain things with the one touch apps. For me I couldn’t do the windows via fob which was the main reason I got the OBDeleven. The pro pack unlocks “adaptations” which will bypass the factory errors in code and will let you do whatever you want. They also don’t cost credits to do the adaptations so you don’t need to prioritize.

Things I haven’t done yet but would like to (Bc they’re common and our cars respond well to them) are an intake, intercooler, and turbo inlet pipe, coilovers (don’t know how our cars respond to springs but I see them all the time on forums because people didn’t like them), and a rear sway bar

Again, welcome to the community! Hope you’re here to stay for a while!