diff --git a/.dockerignore b/.dockerignore
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d1dd24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.dockerignore
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+.git
+.gitignore
+.venv
+__pycache__
+*.pyc
+*.pyo
+.DS_Store
+node_modules
+data
+videos
+*.log
diff --git a/Dockerfile b/Dockerfile
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2e8d7a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Dockerfile
@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
+FROM python:3.11-slim
+
+ENV PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE=1
+ENV PYTHONUNBUFFERED=1
+
+WORKDIR /app
+
+# System deps kept lean to support torch/sentence-transformers wheels.
+RUN apt-get update \
+  && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends build-essential git curl \
+  && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
+
+COPY requirements.txt /app/requirements.txt
+RUN pip install --no-cache-dir -r /app/requirements.txt
+
+# Copy the package into /app/python_app so `python -m python_app.search_app` works.
+COPY . /app/python_app
+
+ENV ELASTIC_URL=http://elasticsearch:9200 \
+    ELASTIC_INDEX=this_little_corner_py \
+    ELASTIC_VERIFY_CERTS=0 \
+    QDRANT_URL=http://qdrant:6333 \
+    QDRANT_COLLECTION=tlc-captions-full \
+    QDRANT_VECTOR_NAME= \
+    QDRANT_VECTOR_SIZE=1024 \
+    QDRANT_EMBED_MODEL=BAAI/bge-large-en-v1.5 \
+    LOCAL_DATA_DIR=/app/data/video_metadata
+
+EXPOSE 8080
+
+WORKDIR /app
+CMD ["python", "-m", "python_app.search_app"]
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 126e74b..49ab704 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -85,3 +85,26 @@ Visit <http://localhost:8080/> and you’ll see a barebones UI that:
 
 Feel free to expand on this scaffold—add proper logging, schedule transcript
 updates, or flesh out the UI—once you’re happy with the baseline behaviour.
+
+## Run with Docker Compose
+
+A quick single-node stack (app + Elasticsearch + Qdrant) is included:
+
+```bash
+docker compose build
+docker compose up
+```
+
+Services:
+- **app** (port 8080): Flask UI/API, embeds queries on demand (downloads the model on first run).
+- **elasticsearch** (port 9200): single node, security disabled for local use.
+- **qdrant** (port 6333): vector index used by `/vector-search`.
+
+Key environment wiring (see `docker-compose.yml` for defaults):
+- `ELASTIC_URL=http://elasticsearch:9200`
+- `ELASTIC_INDEX=this_little_corner_py`
+- `QDRANT_URL=http://qdrant:6333`
+- `QDRANT_COLLECTION=tlc-captions-full`
+- `LOCAL_DATA_DIR=/app/data/video_metadata` (mounted from `./data`)
+
+Mount `./data` (read-only) if you want local fallbacks for metrics; otherwise the app relies entirely on Elasticsearch/Qdrant. Stop the stack with `docker compose down` (add `-v` to clear ES/Qdrant volumes).
diff --git a/docker-compose.yml b/docker-compose.yml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6c337a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docker-compose.yml
@@ -0,0 +1,51 @@
+version: "3.9"
+
+services:
+  app:
+    build:
+      context: .
+      dockerfile: Dockerfile
+    ports:
+      - "8080:8080"
+    environment:
+      ELASTIC_URL: http://elasticsearch:9200
+      ELASTIC_INDEX: this_little_corner_py
+      ELASTIC_VERIFY_CERTS: "0"
+      QDRANT_URL: http://qdrant:6333
+      QDRANT_COLLECTION: tlc-captions-full
+      QDRANT_VECTOR_NAME: ""
+      QDRANT_VECTOR_SIZE: "1024"
+      QDRANT_EMBED_MODEL: BAAI/bge-large-en-v1.5
+      LOCAL_DATA_DIR: /app/data/video_metadata
+    volumes:
+      - ./data:/app/data:ro
+    depends_on:
+      - elasticsearch
+      - qdrant
+
+  elasticsearch:
+    image: docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch:7.17.19
+    environment:
+      discovery.type: single-node
+      xpack.security.enabled: "false"
+      ES_JAVA_OPTS: -Xms1g -Xmx1g
+      cluster.routing.allocation.disk.threshold_enabled: "false"
+    ulimits:
+      memlock:
+        soft: -1
+        hard: -1
+    volumes:
+      - esdata:/usr/share/elasticsearch/data
+    ports:
+      - "9200:9200"
+
+  qdrant:
+    image: qdrant/qdrant:v1.9.1
+    ports:
+      - "6333:6333"
+    volumes:
+      - qdrant_storage:/qdrant/storage
+
+volumes:
+  esdata:
+  qdrant_storage: