diff --git a/ai_ta_backend/filtering_contexts.py b/ai_ta_backend/filtering_contexts.py
index 9566fb60..0db4e336 100644
--- a/ai_ta_backend/filtering_contexts.py
+++ b/ai_ta_backend/filtering_contexts.py
@@ -5,10 +5,10 @@
 
 import openai
 import ray
-import replicate
 import requests
 from langchain import hub
-from transformers import AutoTokenizer
+# import replicate
+# from transformers import AutoTokenizer
 
 # load_dotenv(override=True)
 # tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained("HuggingFaceH4/zephyr-7b-beta")
diff --git a/ai_ta_backend/main.py b/ai_ta_backend/main.py
index cf615833..450c92be 100644
--- a/ai_ta_backend/main.py
+++ b/ai_ta_backend/main.py
@@ -8,6 +8,7 @@
 from flask import Flask, Response, abort, jsonify, request
 from flask_cors import CORS
 from flask_executor import Executor
+import ray
 from sqlalchemy import JSON
 
 from ai_ta_backend.nomic_logging import get_nomic_map, log_convo_to_nomic
@@ -23,6 +24,8 @@
 # load API keys from globally-availabe .env file
 load_dotenv()
 
+ray.init()
+
 @app.route('/')
 def index() -> Response:
   """_summary_
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index 3f85dac5..7f17ca4f 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -55,5 +55,4 @@ unstructured==0.10.29 # causes huge ~5.3 GB of installs. Probbably from onnx: ht
 xlrd # for excel ingest
 newrelic
 ray
-langchainhub
-replicate
\ No newline at end of file
+langchainhub
\ No newline at end of file