# Overview

[**Shadow**](https://www.shadow.xyz) is a platform that reduces the engineering time and costs for advanced onchain data indexing and analytics. Shadow helps you get more data, save users gas, and ship products faster.

Our first product enables you to log anything you want on any smart contract, completely gaslessly.

We've built drop in production-grade infrastructure for [shadow events](https://docs.shadow.xyz/resources/concepts) that allows you to get custom onchain data with just a few lines of code.

## What does Shadow do?

Shadow enables you to modify a deployed contract's source code to add gasless custom event logs and view functions on a [shadow fork](https://docs.shadow.xyz/resources/concepts#what-is-a-shadow-fork) that is instrumented to mirror mainnet state in realtime.

Shadow provides you the tools and infrastructure to:

* Spin up a new shadow fork in one click
* Augment any contract with custom event logs and view functions
* Instantly access your data via standard RPC methods
* See a realtime feed of shadow events from new transactions
* Quickly backfill and export data for historical transactions

Shadow is a fully hosted platform. We manage lots of boring things for you, including:

* Nodes for both the shadow fork and public chain
* Keeping state in sync in realtime, including re-orgs
* Compiling and deploying contracts on your shadow fork
* Proxy patterns and applying changes to all factory created contracts
* Shadow fork and public chain RPC endpoints
* Decoded and indexed event data exports

## Free trial

Use Shadow to get custom data for any contract in minutes with a free trial account.

To get started, just go to [app.shadow.xyz](https://app.shadow.xyz) and login with a Google account.

See our [Getting Started](https://docs.shadow.xyz/quickstart) guide to get set up with custom onchain data in minutes.

## Demo

{% embed url="<https://www.veed.io/view/ac1a8942-679d-444a-ac2b-fa4f0b17274d?panel=showcase>" %}

## Paid plans

Here are Shadow's [paid plans](https://www.shadow.xyz/pricing). If you'd like to set up a custom pricing plan, please fill out the form below or reach out to <accounts@shadow.xyz>.

{% embed url="<https://form.typeform.com/to/bafIEeWk>" fullWidth="true" %}

## Get in touch

<table data-view="cards"><thead><tr><th align="center"></th><th align="center"></th><th data-hidden data-card-target data-type="content-ref"></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td align="center">💬</td><td align="center"><a href="https://t.me/shadow_devs"><strong>Telegram</strong></a></td><td></td></tr><tr><td align="center">💌</td><td align="center"><a href="mailto:founders@shadow.xyz"><strong>Email</strong></a></td><td></td></tr><tr><td align="center">🐦</td><td align="center"><a href="https://twitter.com/shadowxyz"><strong>Twitter</strong></a></td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

## Resources

<table data-view="cards"><thead><tr><th align="center"></th><th align="center"></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td align="center">📚</td><td align="center"><a href="resources/concepts"><strong>Concepts</strong></a></td></tr><tr><td align="center">💡</td><td align="center"><a href="tips/solidity-beginners"><strong>Solidity Beginners</strong></a></td></tr><tr><td align="center">❓</td><td align="center"><a href="resources/faqs"><strong>FAQs</strong></a></td></tr></tbody></table>


---

# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://docs.shadow.xyz/overview.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.