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Guide Introduction to Modal Getting started Functions Functions Invocation methods Function lookups Container lifecycle management Parametrized Functions Dynamic configuration Sandboxes Sandboxes Running commands Networking and security File access Snapshots Pricing and resources VM Sandboxes BetaSidecars AlphaEndpoints Endpoints Shared Endpoints Dedicated Endpoints Endpoint integrations Images Defining Images Using existing container images Named images Fast pull from registry GPUs and other resources GPU acceleration Using CUDA on Modal Configuring CPU, memory, and disk Scaling out Scaling out Input concurrency Batch processing Job queues Dynamic batching Multi-node clusters BetaDeployment Apps, Functions, and entrypoints Managing deployments Continuous deployment Scheduled Functions HTTP Applications Servers Web Functions Streaming endpoints Web Function URLs Request timeouts Proxy Tokens Networking Tunnels Proxies BetaCluster networking Data sharing and storage Passing local data Volumes Storing model weights Cloud bucket mounts Dicts Queues Dataset ingestion Secrets and environment variables Secrets Environment variables Performance Cold start performance Memory Snapshots High-performance LLM inference Reliability and robustness Failures and retries Preemption Timeouts GPU health Troubleshooting Security and privacy Security and privacy Data residency Customer-supplied encryption keys AlphaAudit logs Integrations Using OIDC to authenticate with external services Connecting Modal to your Datadog account Connecting Modal to your OpenTelemetry provider Okta SSO Microsoft Entra SSO Custom SAML SSO SCIM Integration BetaSlack notifications BetaWorkspace & account settings Workspaces Environments Service users User groups BetaRole-Based Access Control (RBAC) Billing Network egress billing Budgets Other topics Feature maturity Notebooks Restricted Functions JavaScript/Go SDKs BetaModal 1.0 migration guide File and project structure Developing and debugging Jupyter notebooks Asynchronous API usage Global variables Region selection GPU Metrics

Getting started with Modal

Using Modal requires an account. If you or your organization do not yet have an account, visit the signup page to begin the process. Enterprise user accounts may also be managed via SAML SSO or SCIM.

You can also ask an agent to help you get set up:

Read https://modal.com/docs/guide/getting-started.md and walk me through Modal setup.

Install the Modal CLI 

The modal CLI is a key tool for interacting with the platform. It will be installed alongside the Python SDK:

uv add modal

If using Modal in a TypeScript or Go project, you can also install the CLI as a standalone tool via uvx.sh:

curl -LsSf uvx.sh/modal/install.sh | sh

Set up a Modal token 

You’ll need a Modal token to use service. After installing the CLI, run this command to configure your local system:

modal setup

This step requires a web browser for authentication. Once the setup flow completes, you can verify that the token works:

modal token info

Install agent skills 

Modal provides a skill that helps coding agents work most effectively with the platform.

The skill can be installed and maintained via the CLI:

modal skills install  # [--claude] [--global]

When installed via the CLI, the skill file will be versioned, and the skill references will be populated with version-aligned documentation.

The skill can also be managed via tools such as npx skills, although it will not include additional reference documentation.

Because the skill is intended to keep agents up to date with the latest features, we encourage regular updates:

modal skills update  # [--claude] [--global]

Test it out 

Test your setup by running a simple script:

import modal

app = modal.App("getting-started")


@app.function()
def square(x: int) -> int:
    print("Using cloud compute for advanced mathematics!")
    return x**2


@app.local_entrypoint()
def main(x: int = 42):
    print(f"The square of {x} is {square.remote(x)}")

Save this to getting_started.py and execute it with modal run getting_started.py.

Or ask your coding agent for a demo:

Write me a simple script that demonstrates the power of the Modal cloud platform.

Next steps