libmodal: Modal SDK Lite
Modal client libraries for JavaScript and Go. (Alpha)
This repository provides lightweight alternatives to the Modal Python Library. They let you start sandboxes (secure VMs), call Modal Functions, read or edit Volumes, and manage containers. However, they don't support deploying Modal Functions — those still need to be written in Python!
Each language in this repository has a library with similar features and API, so you can use Modal from any project.
Make sure you've authenticated with Modal. You can either sign in with the Modal CLI pip install modal && modal setup, or in machine environments, set the following environment variables on your app:
# Replace these with your actual token!
export MODAL_TOKEN_ID=ak-NOTAREALTOKENSTRINGXYZ
export MODAL_TOKEN_SECRET=as-FAKESECRETSTRINGABCDEFThen you're ready to add the Modal SDK to your project.
Install this in any server-side Node.js / Deno / Bun project.
npm install modalExamples:
First, use go get to install the latest version of the library.
go get -u github.com/modal-labs/libmodal/modal-goNext, include Modal in your application:
import "github.com/modal-labs/libmodal/modal-go"Examples:
If you're using Python, please use the Modal Python Library, which is the main SDK and a separate project.
libmodal is a cross-language client SDK for Modal. However, it does not have all the features of the Modal Python Library. We hope to add more features over time, although defining Modal Functions will still be exclusively in Python.
Tests are run against production, and you need to be authenticated with Modal to run them. See the test-support/ folder for details.
To keep complexity manageable, we try to maintain identical behavior across languages. This means:
- When merging a feature or change into
main, update it for all languages simultaneously, with tests. - Code structure should be similar between folders.
- Use a common set of gRPC primitives (retries, deadlines) and exceptions.
- Complex types like streams must behave as close as possible.
- Timeouts should use milliseconds in TypeScript, and
time.Durationin Go.
Code is released under the MIT license.