1. Prepaid credit
USDC top-ups become prepaid Tendril credit in an off-chain ledger. Credit is a usable service balance, not a refundable on-chain deposit, bank balance, or interest-bearing instrument. If you have not used eligible credit, it remains available for eligible Tendril services, subject to account limits, suspension, expiry rules if later disclosed, and applicable law.
Tendril does not claim to provide a chain-level refund path for a settled Algorand transfer. On-chain payments may be irreversible. Contact Tendril promptly about an error; do not assume that a wallet, facilitator, asset issuer, or blockchain can reverse a confirmed transfer.
2. Provisioning failures
For a metered rent session, Tendril verifies the payment, provisions the sandbox, and settles the 0.01 USDC gate fee only after the sandbox is ready. If provisioning fails before settlement, no gate fee settles and no usage credit is charged. Retry with another available node when the response says the request is safe to retry.
For a one-shot run without an existing lease, the 0.01 USDC job gate fee is settled before provisioning so the signed payment remains valid during a long startup. If provisioning then fails, the gate fee remains settled, but no execution seconds are billed because no execution window started.
For a notebook job, the same ordering means a provisioning failure after gate fee settlement leaves the gate fee settled and leaves execution-time credit uncharged. The job result reports the failure through its polling endpoint.
3. Run failures and actual usage
Execution failure, timeout, or a failed program is not automatically a refund when compute actually ran. For a leaseless run, Tendril closes the temporary sandbox and bills the seconds it actually ran at the selected node's rate. A failed result can therefore include an execution charge. A run that fails before execution starts does not receive an execution-time charge; its already-settled gate fee, if any, is not automatically reversed.
For a job executed inside an existing lease, the job's gate payment is settled after the provider returns a result, including a result reporting a failed program. If the provider fails before returning a result, the job gate fee is not settled. The existing lease remains active and is governed by its own meter and close rules; its accumulated usage is charged when that lease is later closed.
4. Grace and lease close
When prepaid credit runs out, the watchdog may provide a grace window worth the configured grace amount at the node's rate. Grace is an opportunity to save work, not a new credit grant. Only seconds the sandbox actually runs enter the close calculation, and the session charge is limited by the remaining ledger balance. There is no separate grace refund because unused grace was never charged.
Releasing a session bills actual elapsed sandbox seconds once. If nothing was taken up front for usage, there is no unused usage charge to refund. Duplicate close attempts do not create duplicate charges.
5. Contributor withdrawals
Contributor earnings accrue at lease close and are withdrawn in one on-chain transfer after the 5.00 USDC minimum is met. Tendril debits the earnings ledger before sending to prevent double payment. If the on-chain send is known to have failed, Tendril restores the debited balance and records the failed attempt.
If a transfer is confirmed on-chain, Tendril cannot promise reversal. A withdrawal also requires the deployment's payout configuration, the minimum balance, and asset opt-in. Verify the destination address and asset opt-in before withdrawing.
6. Contact and disputes
For a suspected duplicate charge, incorrect usage duration, failed provisioning outcome, or withdrawal problem, preserve the request id, job or lease id, transaction id, and response, then contact support@tendrilhq.com or reach out via GitHub. Confirm that this mailbox is monitored before publication. Do not send private keys, seed phrases, API keys, or other secrets in a support request.