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Prerequisites

Before we start building, let's make sure you have all the necessary tools installed.

Required Software​

1. Node.js and Bun​

We use Bun as our JavaScript runtime and package manager. It's faster than npm/yarn and works great with React.

# Install Bun (macOS/Linux)
curl -fsSL https://bun.sh/install | bash

# Verify installation
bun --version

2. Python and uv​

We use uv for Python package management. It's extremely fast and handles virtual environments automatically.

# Install uv (macOS/Linux)
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

# Verify installation
uv --version

3. Docker and Docker Compose​

Docker runs our databases (PostgreSQL, ChromaDB) in containers.

# macOS: Install Docker Desktop from https://docker.com/desktop

# Verify installation
docker --version
docker compose version

4. OpenAI API Key​

You'll need an OpenAI API key to use their language models.

  1. Go to platform.openai.com
  2. Sign up or log in
  3. Navigate to API Keys
  4. Create a new key
  5. Save it somewhere safe (you'll need it later)
Cost Warning

OpenAI API calls cost money. For development, gpt-4o-mini is cheap (~$0.15 per 1M input tokens). A typical development session costs less than $1.

If you're using VS Code, install these extensions:

  • Python - Microsoft's Python extension
  • Pylance - Python language server
  • ESLint - JavaScript linting
  • Tailwind CSS IntelliSense - CSS autocomplete
  • Thunder Client - API testing (alternative to Postman)

Verify Your Setup​

Run these commands to verify everything is installed:

# Check all tools
echo "Bun: $(bun --version)"
echo "uv: $(uv --version)"
echo "Docker: $(docker --version)"
echo "Docker Compose: $(docker compose version --short)"

You should see version numbers for all tools. If any command fails, revisit the installation steps above.

Project Directory​

Create a directory for our project:

mkdir food-companion
cd food-companion

We'll build everything inside this directory.

Next, we'll set up the project structure and initialize both the backend and frontend.