Setting up my ML environment from scratch: MedMind

I decided to build a clinical AI system from scratch. Not using the OpenAI API. Not a tutorial project. An actual system where I train my own model, build my own search pipeline, and deploy the whole thing. This post is about Day 1 — setting up everything before writing a single line of ML code. Why I'm doing this Most AI projects I see from students are just API wrappers. You call GPT-4, get an answer, show it in a UI. That's fine, but it doesn't teach you how any of it actually works. I wanted