diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index b174b3a..892aa0d 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -9,6 +9,8 @@ dist/
 build/
 coverage/
 *.tsbuildinfo
+.venv/
+venv/
 
 .DS_Store
 
diff --git a/CLAUDE.md b/CLAUDE.md
index 196231f..3567294 100644
--- a/CLAUDE.md
+++ b/CLAUDE.md
@@ -14,11 +14,10 @@ The ML pipeline lives under `Machine_Learning/`. The inference service lives und
 cd Machine_Learning
 ```
 
-Set up a Python environment:
+Activate the Python environment (already exists at repo root):
 
 ```bash
-python -m venv venv
-source venv/bin/activate
+source ../.venv/bin/activate
 pip install -r requirements.txt
 ```
 
diff --git a/Machine_Learning/requirements.txt b/Machine_Learning/requirements.txt
index 5f539d9..5ba1f16 100644
--- a/Machine_Learning/requirements.txt
+++ b/Machine_Learning/requirements.txt
@@ -1,7 +1,10 @@
-tensorflow>=2.13.0
-tensorflowjs>=4.10.0
-jupyter>=1.0.0
-ipykernel>=6.25.0
-tf2onnx>=1.16.1
-onnx>=1.16.0
-onnxruntime>=1.17.0
+tensorflow==2.19.0              # CPU + Colab; for local GPU, install tensorflow[and-cuda]
+tensorflowjs==4.22.0
+numpy
+matplotlib
+seaborn
+pillow
+split-folders
+scikit-learn
+tf2onnx
+onnxruntime