1. Service
Tendril is a best-effort, per-second compute marketplace. Depending on the deployment, compute may come from hosted infrastructure such as Modal or from nodes operated by independent contributors. Hosted notebook capacity and contributor-run nodes may have different surfaces, availability, prices, and limits.
Tendril is not a bank, investment account, or provider of guaranteed compute capacity. The service does not pay interest and does not maintain segregated deposit accounts. For custodial accounts, Tendril holds and signs with a platform-managed Algorand wallet. Prepaid credit is an off-chain service ledger, not a bank balance or an investment product.
2. Identity and accounts
An Algorand wallet address is used as payment and credit identity for wallet flows. A settled payment credits the address that sent it; access to that address's credit requires the ability to sign for it. Where email or Google sign-in is enabled, Tendril creates a platform-managed Algorand wallet for the account. The platform may hold and sign with that wallet to perform actions you explicitly approve.
Do not send funds from an exchange or another address you cannot sign for: the resulting credit may not be spendable by you. Tendril does not promise that no identity, sanctions, tax, or other compliance checks will ever apply.
3. Prepaid credit and payments
USDC payments on Algorand buy prepaid, off-chain Tendril credit. The default top-up bounds are 0.10 USDC minimum and 1000 USDC maximum per top-up, subject to deployment configuration. Credit is recorded in Tendril's ledger and is usable for eligible Tendril services; it is not an on-chain deposit, does not earn interest, and is not itself a token or claim on a segregated account.
The same settled payment cannot be credited twice. Tendril records payment identity and rejects or idempotently handles replays according to the endpoint; a replay does not create duplicate credit or a second paid action.
On-chain transfers are made to the platform address shown in the payment request. Except where the Refund Policy expressly says otherwise, Tendril does not promise a chain-level refund or reversal of a settled transfer.
4. Prices and billing
Prices are shown by the applicable API response or UI and may vary by node, provider, deployment, and configuration. Current default examples are:
- 0.01 USDC on-chain gate fee to open a metered rent session;
- per-second rent at the selected contributor node's advertised rate;
- 0.01 USDC on-chain gate fee per one-shot run job, plus execution time from prepaid credit;
- 0.10 USDC on-chain fee to mint a contributor API key; and
- contributor node time at the node's advertised rate, less a 1% platform fee on collected usage by default.
For a metered session, the gate fee is separate from usage. Tendril starts the meter when the sandbox is ready and closes it on release, watchdog close, or another terminal event. The close calculation uses the seconds the sandbox actually ran, prorated at the node rate. A session charge is capped by available credit; a leaseless code run can be charged for its actual execution and may leave a negative credit balance that must be topped up before further use.
When credit runs out, an idle watchdog may allow a grace window worth 1.00 USDC at that node's rate before force-closing the sandbox, subject to deployment configuration. Grace is not purchased credit or a promise of additional free capacity. It exists to save work. Only seconds the sandbox actually runs enter the close calculation, and a session cannot be charged beyond the credit the ledger permits.
5. Contributor earnings
For contributor-run nodes, collected usage is credited to the contributor's earnings ledger when the lease closes. Earnings are not sent on-chain per lease. The contributor may withdraw the full available balance once it reaches the 5.00 USDC minimum and the payout address has opted into the payment asset, if withdrawals are enabled for the deployment. If Tendril determines that an on-chain send failed before completion, it restores the debited earnings balance and records the failed attempt. A confirmed send is recorded with its transaction id, but a process failure or uncertain chain result may require manual reconciliation and is not guaranteed to restore automatically.
Contributors must operate only software and hardware they control, keep their daemon and runtime supported, accurately advertise capacity and price, protect their API key, maintain required network connectivity, and avoid tampering with or accessing renter workloads. Tendril may suspend a node or account for abuse, material misrepresentation, security risk, or non-payment risk.
6. Acceptable use
You may not use Tendril to violate law or third-party rights; distribute malware, credentials, or illegal content; attack, scan, or disrupt networks or systems without authorization; evade access controls; mine cryptocurrency; infringe intellectual property; process regulated data without an appropriate agreement; or interfere with another user's compute, privacy, or availability.
You are responsible for code, data, packages, secrets, credentials, outputs, and network activity you send through the service. Do not place secrets in workloads unless you accept the risks of shared or third-party infrastructure.
7. Availability and security
Tendril is provided on a best-effort basis with no uptime, performance, durability, backup, or availability SLA. Nodes can disappear, restart, become unreachable, or be reclaimed. Sandboxes are intended to provide isolation, but no hosted or contributor-run environment is guaranteed secure or error-free. Keep your own copies of important inputs and outputs.
8. Suspension and termination
Tendril may reject work, limit spend, suspend access, stop a node, or terminate a session when required for safety, capacity, maintenance, legal compliance, payment risk, or violation of these Terms. Closing a session does not reverse a settled on-chain gate fee. Any remaining eligible prepaid credit remains subject to the Refund Policy and applicable law.
9. Disclaimers and liability
To the maximum extent permitted by law, Tendril is provided as-is and as available, without implied warranties of merchantability, fitness, title, non-infringement, uninterrupted service, or suitability for a particular workload. You use third-party nodes and hosted providers at your own risk.
To the maximum extent permitted by law, Tendril and its operators will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or lost profit, revenue, data, goodwill, or business losses. The aggregate liability cap for claims arising from the service is the greater of the amount you paid Tendril for the affected service during the six months before the event or 100.00 USDC, except to the extent a limitation is prohibited by law.
10. Changes and contact
Tendril may change these Terms, prices, limits, providers, or features. The updated version will carry a new last-updated date. Continued use after an effective update means you accept the updated Terms to the extent allowed by law.
Contact: legal@tendrilhq.com or reach out via GitHub. Confirm that this mailbox is monitored before publication.