Modal Made Crystal Clear · chapter 2: The Big Picture: How Modal Thinks
The big schema
2026-09-11
Inputs enter through three doors, land on a Function inside an App, and run in containers booted from the Function's Image. Volumes and Secrets attach from the side, the autoscaler sizes the pool, and everything runs on Modal's pooled multi-cloud hardware. Later chapters zoom into each part of this diagram.
Below: the paragraph from the book that builds this idea, then the diagram itself (Figure 2.1), and a recap. About a minute of reading.
Now put all six on one page. Figure 2.1 is the most important diagram in this book: an App holding Functions, each Function backed by an Image and a pool of containers, Volumes and Secrets attached from the side, three doors for inputs at the top, the autoscaler governing the pool, and the multi-cloud hardware underneath. Later chapters zoom into its parts one by one, so when a figure in chapter 7 looks familiar, that is deliberate.
Recap
- The idea: Inputs enter through three doors, land on a Function inside an App, and run in containers booted from the Function's Image.
- The picture: Figure 2.1, from chapter 2 ("The Big Picture: How Modal Thinks") of Modal Made Crystal Clear.
- Go deeper: the chapter builds this step by step, with recipes and sources at the end.
This diagram is one of many in Modal Made Crystal Clear.
Every chapter opens with the gist, draws the hard ideas, and ends with recipes and sources.
Get the book
