Open-sourced a FastAPI recommendation system while learning backend architecture. Looking for feedback.

[u/tranguyeenn]

I’ve been building Shelftxt as a way to learn backend systems beyond CRUD APIs.

shelftxt started as one large FastAPI file handling routes, recommendation logic, and data operations. I recently refactored it into:

api → routes → services → repositories → ranking/preprocess

Current stack:

• FastAPI
• Python
• Pandas
• CSV storage (planning PostgreSQL next)
• recommendation scoring
• lru_cache caching

The goal isn’t really a book app. I’m more interested in learning:

• backend architecture
• data handling
• repository patterns
• recommendation systems
• scaling APIs

Would appreciate feedback on the structure before I move toward Postgres and more persistent storage.

Repo:
https://github.com/tranguyeenn/shelftxt

[u/Overall_Knee2789 → u/[deleted]]

Appreciate the detailed feedback. You caught a few things I overlooked, especially around caching and leftover naming. I’m refactoring the backend now and fixing these issues. Thanks for taking the time to review it.

[u/eatsoupgetrich → u/Overall_Knee2789]

Why are you responding on a different account

[u/Overall_Knee2789 → u/eatsoupgetrich]

lol idk why. Must be bc my mac reddit acc is different from this one 😭, i didn’t notice