Technical requirements
The technical requirements for this chapter are similar to the requirements in the chapters in which we created backends with FastAPI, with the addition of a couple of libraries and services for the email-sending functionality and AI integration:
- Python 3.11.7 or higher
- Visual Studio Code with the Python extensions set up (same as in Chapter 3)
- An account on MongoDB Atlas
- An account on Render.com (if you wish to deploy the FastAPI backend)
- An OpenAI account with API access, or a free, locally run LLM such as Llama 2 or Llama 3 in case you do not want to deploy the app and incur costs
- A Netlify account (free tier)
We strongly recommend starting with the free (or cheapest) tiers of the previous accounts and making sure that you feel comfortable within these environments.
With the technical requirements out of the way, let’s discuss the project you will build throughout this chapter.