diff --git a/backend/__init__.py b/backend/__init__.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e69de29
diff --git a/backend/app/__init__.py b/backend/app/__init__.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e69de29
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ff350f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
+[project]
+name = "fabledcurator"
+version = "0.1.0"
+description = "FabledSword family — self-hosted media curation, gallery, ML tagging, and subscription-driven downloads."
+requires-python = ">=3.12"
+
+[tool.setuptools.packages.find]
+where = ["."]
+include = ["backend*"]
diff --git a/requirements-ml.txt b/requirements-ml.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..826fdd0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/requirements-ml.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
+-r requirements.txt
+
+# ML stack
+torch>=2.2,<2.3
+torchvision>=0.17,<0.18
+transformers>=4.40,<4.41
+onnxruntime>=1.17,<1.18
+huggingface-hub>=0.22,<0.23
+opencv-python-headless>=4.9,<5.0
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ada374b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+# Web
+quart>=0.19,<0.20
+hypercorn>=0.16,<0.17
+
+# DB
+sqlalchemy[asyncio]>=2.0,<2.1
+asyncpg>=0.29,<0.30
+psycopg[binary]>=3.1,<3.2
+alembic>=1.13,<1.14
+pgvector>=0.2,<0.3
+
+# Task queue
+celery>=5.4,<5.5
+redis>=5.0,<6.0
+
+# Crypto for credential storage (lands in FC-3, but pinned now for stability)
+cryptography>=42,<43
+
+# Image handling (lands in FC-2)
+pillow>=10.2,<11.0
+imagehash>=4.3,<4.4
+
+# Gallery-dl wrapper (lands in FC-3)
+gallery-dl>=1.27,<1.28
+
+# Utilities
+python-dotenv>=1.0,<2.0
+structlog>=24.1,<25.0
diff --git a/ruff.toml b/ruff.toml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f71eae8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/ruff.toml
@@ -0,0 +1,23 @@
+target-version = "py312"
+line-length = 100
+
+[lint]
+select = [
+    "E", "W",   # pycodestyle
+    "F",        # pyflakes
+    "I",        # isort
+    "UP",       # pyupgrade
+    "B",        # flake8-bugbear
+    "C4",       # comprehensions
+    "ASYNC",    # async correctness
+]
+ignore = [
+    "E501",     # line length, handled by formatter
+]
+
+[lint.per-file-ignores]
+"alembic/versions/*.py" = ["E", "F", "I", "UP"]
+"tests/*" = ["F401"]
+
+[format]
+quote-style = "double"