Hey everyone,

I'm facing an issue while deploying my FastAPI app on Railway, and I need some help.

Problem Description:

My app fails to start due to a missing module error:
Traceback (most recent call last):

File "/app/app.py", line 1, in <module>

from brain_of_the_doctor import encoded_image, analyze_user_problem

File "/app/brain_of_the_doctor.py", line 3, in <module>

from dotenv import load_dotenv

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'dotenv'

This happens during the build process, and the error suggests that python-dotenv is not installed, even though it is listed in my requirements.txt.

The issue seems to be that RUN python app.py is executed before dependencies are installed inside the Railway build environment. Since python-dotenv isn’t installed at that stage, it throws the error.

Please help