set env vars necessary for celery within celery config

api/celery_app.py

@@ -1,5 +1,16 @@
+import os
+import sys
 from celery import Celery
 
+# Automatically set environment variables in celery_app.py
+
+# Set Django settings module
+os.environ.setdefault('DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE', 'backend.settings')
+
+# Add the project directory to sys.path (similar to the manual PYTHONPATH)
+project_root = os.path.abspath(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), '..'))
+sys.path.append(project_root)
+
 app = Celery('backend')
 
 # Load configuration from Django settings, using the CELERY namespace.