Introduction

What Modem is: a persistent cloud computer for your CLI agents.

$ modem claude
  Claude Code opens on your computer. Ctrl+Q detaches.
  Close the laptop: the session keeps running up there.

What it is

A computer is a small virtual machine with a persistent disk that belongs to your account. You install things on it, log your agents into it, leave files on it. When nobody is using it, it suspends by itself; the next command wakes it in about a second, exactly where you left it.

On top of that machine, Modem gives you two ways of working: sit inside it with a full terminal agent, or hand it a task and walk away.

What it is not

• Not an agent. Modem runs Claude Code and Codex: the CLIs you already use, on your own accounts. Kimi is coming soon.
• Not a model provider. Inference is billed by Anthropic or OpenAI, never resold here.
• Not a hosting platform. Computers are workbenches, not production servers. No public ports, no always-on services.

Why it exists

CLI agents are excellent and stubbornly tied to your laptop: it has to stay open, the terminal has to stay alive, a task that takes an hour takes an hour of you not closing the lid. Renting a VM trades that problem for provisioning, SSH, runtimes, secrets and remembering to turn it off.

Modem removes both. One command gives you a machine that persists, sleeps on its own, and keeps working when you leave.

Where to go next