Use start_alwrity_backend.py via Procfile, single requirements.txt

backend/Procfile

@@ -1 +1,3 @@
-web: gunicorn -c gunicorn_config.py app:app
+# Use start_alwrity_backend.py for deployment
+# This script handles all bootstrap logic and starts uvicorn
+web: python start_alwrity_backend.py

backend/gunicorn_config.py

@@ -26,9 +26,10 @@ errorlog = "-"
 loglevel = os.getenv("LOG_LEVEL", "info").lower()
 
 # Don't preload - bind to port FIRST, then load worker
-# This fixes "No open ports detected" on Render
 preload_app = False
 
+# Use the startup script that handles all the logic
+factory = False  # app:app is not a factory, it's the app object
 
 def on_starting(server):
     """Called just before the master process is initialized."""

backend/render-build.sh

@@ -3,18 +3,55 @@ set -euo pipefail
 
 python -m pip install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel
 
-# Check if podcast-only mode is enabled - skip heavy ML models if so
+# Check if podcast-only mode is enabled
 ENABLED_FEATURES="${ALWRITY_ENABLED_FEATURES:-all}"
-IS_PODCAST_ONLY=false
 
 if [[ "$ENABLED_FEATURES" == "podcast" ]]; then
-    IS_PODCAST_ONLY=true
+    echo "🔊 Podcast-only mode - installing minimal dependencies"
-    echo "🔊 Podcast-only mode detected - using minimal requirements"
+    # Create minimal requirements on-the-fly
-    python -m pip install --retries 10 --timeout 120 -r requirements-podcast.txt
+    cat > requirements_min.txt << 'EOF'
+fastapi>=0.115.14
+starlette>=0.40.0,<0.47.0
+sse-starlette<3.0.0
+uvicorn>=0.24.0
+uvicorn[standard]>=0.24.0
+python-multipart>=0.0.6
+python-dotenv>=1.0.0
+loguru>=0.7.2
+tenacity>=8.2.3
+pydantic>=2.5.2,<3.0.0
+typing-extensions>=4.8.0
+PyJWT>=2.8.0
+cryptography>=41.0.0
+fastapi-clerk-auth>=0.0.7
+sqlalchemy>=2.0.25
+stripe>=8.0.0
+httpx>=0.27.2,<0.28.0
+openai>=1.3.0
+google-genai>=1.0.0
+gtts>=2.4.0
+pyttsx3>=2.90
+markdown>=3.5.0
+pandas>=2.0.0
+numpy>=1.24.0
+Pillow>=10.0.0
+huggingface_hub>=1.1.4
+moviepy==2.1.2
+imageio>=2.31.0
+imageio-ffmpeg>=0.4.9
+pytest>=7.4.0
+pytest-asyncio>=0.21.0
+apscheduler>=3.10.0
+redis>=5.0.0
+schedule>=1.2.0
+EOF
+    python -m pip install --retries 10 --timeout 120 -r requirements_min.txt
 else
-    echo "📦 Full mode - using all requirements"
+    echo "📦 Full mode - installing all dependencies"
     python -m pip install --retries 10 --timeout 120 -r requirements.txt
-    # Download required NLTK and spaCy models during build phase (skip for podcast-only)
+    # Download spaCy/NLTK models for full mode
     python -m spacy download en_core_web_sm
     python -m nltk.downloader punkt_tab stopwords averaged_perceptron_tagger
 fi
+
+echo "✅ Build dependencies installed"