diff --git a/Dockerfile b/Dockerfile
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+++ b/Dockerfile
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+# Aether API - FastAPI + Gunicorn
+# Using tiangolo's optimized FastAPI image
+FROM tiangolo/uvicorn-gunicorn-fastapi:python3.11
+
+LABEL maintainer="Scott Idem <scott.idem@oneskyit.com>"
+
+WORKDIR /srv/aether_api
+
+# Install OS dependencies for image processing and utilities
+RUN apt-get update; \
+    apt-get install -y \
+    imagemagick ffmpeg curl poppler-utils \
+    ; \
+    rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*;
+
+# Install Python requirements
+# This file is now located in the project root
+COPY requirements.txt /tmp/requirements.txt
+RUN pip install --no-cache-dir -r /tmp/requirements.txt
+
+# Create a reference of actual installed versions
+RUN pip freeze >> /tmp/aether_fastapi_requirements_current.txt
+
+# The application source is mounted as a volume in docker-compose.yml 
+# for real-time development, but we set the default command here.
+CMD ["gunicorn", "--conf", "/conf/gunicorn_fastapi_conf.py"]
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
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+++ b/requirements.txt
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+# Aether API - Python Requirements
+# Managed via Aether Docker Orchestration (Unified V3)
+
+aiofiles
+argon2-cffi
+argon2-cffi-bindings
+# asgiref
+# async-timeout
+# baize
+charset-normalizer
+click
+Deprecated
+dnspython
+email-validator
+et-xmlfile
+fastapi==0.115.5
+# greenlet
+gunicorn
+h11
+html2text
+httpcore
+httptools
+httpx
+idna
+# itsdangerous
+# Jinja2
+MarkupSafe
+mysqlclient
+numpy
+openpyxl
+orjson
+# packaging
+pandas
+passlib
+pdf2image
+Pillow
+pycparser
+pydantic==1.*
+PyJWT
+pyparsing
+python-dateutil
+# python-dotenv
+python-multipart
+pytz
+PyYAML
+qrcode
+redis[hiredis]
+requests
+rfc3986
+# six
+sniffio
+SQLAlchemy==1.4.52
+starlette
+stripe
+typing_extensions
+ujson
+urllib3
+uvicorn
+uvloop
+Wand
+watchfiles
+# watchgod
+websockets
+wrapt
+xlrd