New Features

CLI Changelog Tool: A new modal changelog command allows developers to flexibly query changelog entries with options like --since=1.2, --since=2025-12-01, and --newer. This feature is designed to help coding agents and developers stay informed about new features programmatically.

Secret Management Enhancement: The new modal.Secret.update() method enables programmatic modification of environment variables within a Secret, using Python's familiar dict.update() semantics. Developers can now overwrite or extend Secret contents without replacing the entire object. Note that Secret updates only affect containers that start up after the modification.

Function Monitoring Improvements: The dataclass returned by modal.Function.get_current_stats() now includes a num_running_inputs field, providing visibility into the number of inputs a Function is currently processing.

What Developers Need to Know

These changes improve the Modal development workflow by providing better tooling for introspection (changelog queries), more flexible secret management for dynamic configurations, and enhanced observability for running functions. The changelog CLI is particularly useful for automation and AI agent integration, allowing systems to query what's changed without manual documentation review.