RunPod CLI and P2P File Transfer | Generated by AI

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Yes. RunPod has an official CLI called runpodctl.

It’s pre-installed on every RunPod pod. For local install:

# macOS (Air)
brew install runpod/runpodctl/runpodctl

# Linux (workstation)
wget -qO- cli.runpod.net | sudo bash

Auth and core usage:

runpodctl config --apiKey <​API_KEY>

# Pods
runpodctl get pod
runpodctl create pod --name dev --imageName runpod/pytorch:latest --gpuType "NVIDIA A100"
runpodctl start pod <POD_ID>
runpodctl stop pod <POD_ID>
runpodctl remove pod <POD_ID>

# File transfer (peer-to-peer, no SSH needed)
runpodctl send model.pt        # prints a one-time code
runpodctl receive <CODE>       # on the other machine

The send/receive pair is the genuinely useful part — it’s a croc-based P2P transfer that works across NAT without configuring SSH keys, handy for moving checkpoints between your workstation and a rented pod.

For programmatic control (spinning pods up/down inside an agent), the GraphQL API and the runpod Python SDK (pip install runpod) give finer control than the CLI — serverless endpoints, autoscaling, and runpod.create_pod() calls you can wire into automation.

References:

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