Architecture
If you’ve reached this part — get ready for some friendly nerdiness!
Under the hood, OstuniHelper is a modern full-stack platform built with love and precision.
The frontend runs on clean HTML and CSS, styled using a compiled version of TailwindCSS for performance and consistency.
On the interactive side, JavaScript powers the chat interface, category navigation, and translation logic, ensuring that every click and conversation feels smooth and natural.
Behind the scenes, everything is handled by a Flask backend running on an Ubuntu VPS.
Requests are managed through Gunicorn and served securely via Nginx, making the system fast, reliable, and scalable.
All the activities, services, and experiences you see inside OstuniHelper (and OstuniAI) are stored in a MySQL database.
Each category — whether it’s restaurants, tours, or events — has its own dedicated API endpoint that fetches structured data directly from the database.
Media files such as images are hosted in an AWS S3 container, ensuring quick global access to all visuals.
On top of this, OstuniAI ties everything together: it allows users to explore the same content conversationally.
Thanks to a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) system, the AI can intelligently extract and present data, almost as if it were clicking the same buttons you see in the interface — only faster and smarter.
Finally, we introduced PromOstuni, the city’s promotion hub where local offers and events are shared directly through the platform.
Visitors can even subscribe to a newsletter and stay up-to-date with what’s happening around town.
Altogether, it’s a growing ecosystem — part technology, part passion project — designed to make Ostuni more connected, welcoming, and future-ready.