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FastAPI AI Kit

Introduction

FastAPI AI Kit is a production-ready backend boilerplate for developers building AI-powered APIs. Instead of wiring up authentication, LLM integration, RAG pipelines, billing metering, and infrastructure from scratch, you start with a clean, modular codebase where all of that is already done.

Who is this for?

  • Indie developers shipping AI products (chatbots, assistants, RAG apps) fast
  • Startup engineers who need a backend that's ready to handle real users from day one
  • Backend developers who want to add LLM capabilities to an existing product without a rewrite

What's included

| Module | Description | |---|---| | Auth | JWT authentication, API key issuance, rate limiting per key | | LLM Layer | Unified interface for OpenAI, Anthropic, and local models | | Streaming | Server-sent events (SSE) with per-request token counting | | RAG Pipeline | Document ingestion, embedding, and retrieval via pgvector or Qdrant | | Billing Hooks | Stripe-compatible usage metering, pluggable per-key | | Background Jobs | Celery + Redis, or arq — pre-configured | | Database | PostgreSQL + SQLAlchemy 2.0 async + Alembic migrations | | DevOps | Docker, docker-compose, deploy guides for Railway/Render/Fly/VPS | | Quality | pytest, pre-commit, GitHub Actions CI |

What it is NOT

  • A no-code platform — this is real Python code you own and extend
  • A hosted service — you deploy it anywhere you like
  • A tutorial — it's production code, not a learning exercise

Philosophy

The kit follows a few simple principles:

  1. Boring over clever. Clean, readable code over clever abstractions.
  2. Easy to delete. Every module is decoupled. Don't need billing hooks? Delete them. No footguns.
  3. Extend, don't fight. Standard FastAPI, standard SQLAlchemy. If you know FastAPI, you know this codebase.
  4. Config over code. LLM providers, rate limits, tier definitions — all in config files, not hardcoded.
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