diff --git a/Dockerfile b/Dockerfile
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6c80238
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Dockerfile
@@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
+FROM deepset/haystack:base-cpu-v1.23.0
+
+COPY requirements.txt .
+RUN pip install -r requirements.txt
+
+# copy only the application files in /app
+# Streamlit does not allow running an app from the root directory
+COPY Rock_fact_checker.py app/
+COPY pages app/pages
+COPY app_utils app/app_utils
+COPY data app/data
+
+WORKDIR app
+
+EXPOSE 8501
+
+ENTRYPOINT ["streamlit", "run", "Rock_fact_checker.py"]
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index d7e547a..0ed8009 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -3,9 +3,8 @@ title: Fact Checking rocks!
 emoji: 🎸
 colorFrom: purple
 colorTo: blue
-sdk: streamlit
-sdk_version: 1.19.0
-app_file: Rock_fact_checker.py
+sdk: docker
+app_port: 8501
 pinned: true
 models: [sentence-transformers/msmarco-distilbert-base-tas-b, microsoft/deberta-v2-xlarge-mnli, google/flan-t5-large]
 tags: [fact-checking, rock, natural language inference, dense retrieval, large language models, haystack, neural search]
diff --git a/app_utils/config.py b/app_utils/config.py
index 4d7e3d1..a41aacb 100644
--- a/app_utils/config.py
+++ b/app_utils/config.py
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-import streamlit as st
+import os
 
 INDEX_DIR = "data/index"
 STATEMENTS_PATH = "data/statements.txt"
@@ -9,17 +9,11 @@
 
 # In HF Space, we use microsoft/deberta-v2-xlarge-mnli
 # for local testing, a smaller model is better
-try:
-    NLI_MODEL = st.secrets["NLI_MODEL"]
-except:
-    NLI_MODEL = "valhalla/distilbart-mnli-12-1"
+NLI_MODEL = os.environ.get("NLI_MODEL", "valhalla/distilbart-mnli-12-1")
 print(f"Used NLI model: {NLI_MODEL}")
 
 
 # In HF Space, we use google/flan-t5-large
 # for local testing, a smaller model is better
-try:
-    PROMPT_MODEL = st.secrets["PROMPT_MODEL"]
-except:
-    PROMPT_MODEL = "google/flan-t5-small"
+PROMPT_MODEL = os.environ.get("PROMPT_MODEL", "google/flan-t5-small")
 print(f"Used Prompt model: {PROMPT_MODEL}")
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index c943e14..b940297 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -1,10 +1,10 @@
-farm-haystack[faiss,inference]==1.23.0
+# we now use the Haystack Docker image, so the following line is not needed anymore
+# farm-haystack[faiss,inference]==1.23.0
+
 haystack-entailment-checker
 plotly==5.14.1
 pydantic<2
 
-# commented to not interfere with streamlit SDK in HF spces
-# uncomment for local installation
-# streamlit==1.19.0
+streamlit==1.19.0
 
 altair<5