diff --git a/app/Dockerfile b/app/Dockerfile
index 35eee31..142fa61 100644
--- a/app/Dockerfile
+++ b/app/Dockerfile
@@ -1,5 +1,11 @@
 FROM python:3.11-slim
 
+# Keep python fast and quiet, and pip lean
+ENV PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE=1 \
+    PYTHONUNBUFFERED=1 \
+    PIP_NO_CACHE_DIR=1
+
+# System deps (ffmpeg for media, jq for scripts, poppler-utils for PDFs, curl for healthcheck)
 RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
     ffmpeg \
     curl \
@@ -8,11 +14,19 @@ RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
  && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
 
 WORKDIR /app
-COPY requirements.txt .
-RUN pip install --no-cache-dir -r requirements.txt
 
+# Upgrade pip first, then install deps
+COPY requirements.txt .
+RUN python -m pip install --upgrade pip \
+ && pip install --no-cache-dir -r requirements.txt \
+ && pip check || true
+
+# App code
 COPY app.py worker.py ./
 RUN pip install --no-cache-dir gunicorn==22.0.0
 
+# Basic container health check (relies on curl)
+HEALTHCHECK --interval=30s --timeout=5s --retries=3 CMD curl -fsS http://127.0.0.1:8080/ || exit 1
+
 EXPOSE 8080
 CMD ["gunicorn", "-b", "0.0.0.0:8080", "app:app", "--workers", "2", "--threads", "4"]
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