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skills/modal/references/getting-started.md

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+# Getting Started with Modal
+
+## Sign Up
+
+Sign up for free at https://modal.com and get $30/month of credits.
+
+## Authentication
+
+Set up authentication using the Modal CLI:
+
+```bash
+modal token new
+```
+
+This creates credentials in `~/.modal.toml`. Alternatively, set environment variables:
+- `MODAL_TOKEN_ID`
+- `MODAL_TOKEN_SECRET`
+
+## Basic Concepts
+
+### Modal is Serverless
+
+Modal is a serverless platform - only pay for resources used and spin up containers on demand in seconds.
+
+### Core Components
+
+**App**: Represents an application running on Modal, grouping one or more Functions for atomic deployment.
+
+**Function**: Acts as an independent unit that scales up and down independently. No containers run (and no charges) when there are no live inputs.
+
+**Image**: The environment code runs in - a container snapshot with dependencies installed.
+
+## First Modal App
+
+Create a file `hello_modal.py`:
+
+```python
+import modal
+
+app = modal.App(name="hello-modal")
+
+@app.function()
+def hello():
+    print("Hello from Modal!")
+    return "success"
+
+@app.local_entrypoint()
+def main():
+    hello.remote()
+```
+
+Run with:
+```bash
+modal run hello_modal.py
+```
+
+## Running Apps
+
+### Ephemeral Apps (Development)
+
+Run temporarily with `modal run`:
+```bash
+modal run script.py
+```
+
+The app stops when the script exits. Use `--detach` to keep running after client exits.
+
+### Deployed Apps (Production)
+
+Deploy persistently with `modal deploy`:
+```bash
+modal deploy script.py
+```
+
+View deployed apps at https://modal.com/apps or with:
+```bash
+modal app list
+```
+
+Stop deployed apps:
+```bash
+modal app stop app-name
+```
+
+## Key Features
+
+- **Fast prototyping**: Write Python, run on GPUs in seconds
+- **Serverless APIs**: Create web endpoints with a decorator
+- **Scheduled jobs**: Run cron jobs in the cloud
+- **GPU inference**: Access T4, L4, A10, A100, H100, H200, B200 GPUs
+- **Distributed volumes**: Persistent storage for ML models
+- **Sandboxes**: Secure containers for untrusted code