docker compose passes an empty .env line as OPENAI_BASE_URL="", and with base_url=None the openai SDK fell back to that empty value, so every call failed with "Connection error". Always pass the base URL explicitly. Also disable gunicorn's unused control socket, which logged a permission error because /app is read-only for the app user. Found while deploying to the homelab server. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <[email protected]>