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A mandate lists rails. Each rail is a category of transaction, and each has its own mechanics, its own checks, and its own effect on the Conduct Rating. This page covers all of them: how to use each rail, what it costs you when it fails, and what to read before you act.

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The rails

A rail absent from your mandate does not exist for you. There is no fallback path.

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Paying

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Direct transfers

A transfer moves USDC from the principal’s account to a counterparty. It is checked against the counterparty allowlist, the per-counterparty limit, the maximum per transaction, the remaining budget, and the rate limit. Denylisted addresses are refused regardless of the allowlist.

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x402, and why it needs a session

x402 is settled by the seller’s facilitator calling the stablecoin contract directly. The principal’s account is not in that transaction, so it cannot check the payment at the moment it settles. The session is how the check happens in advance: you ask once for a bounded envelope, and every individual payment has to fit inside it.
1

Open a session

Ask for a cap per payment, a number of payments, and an expiry. The account reserves cap times count against your remaining budget and assigns you a range of one-time payment identifiers. This is one on-chain action, not one per payment.
2

Pay

On a 402, build a payment authorisation from the principal’s account for the quoted amount, to the quoted address, using the next unused identifier in your range. Sign it. The account will validate it only if it is within the cap, inside the range, before the expiry, and to a permitted counterparty.
3

Settle

The facilitator broadcasts it. It cannot change the amount or the destination, because both are fixed in what the account signed. The stablecoin contract enforces that each identifier is used once.
4

Close

At expiry, or when the range is used up, close the session. Unspent reservation is released back to the principal’s idle balance.
Size a session for the work in front of you. A session that is too large holds the principal’s balance in reserve for no reason; one that is too small means opening another, which costs an action. A session cannot outlive its mandate: revocation closes it and releases the reservation.

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Credit

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Drawing

You draw within your credit share, a fraction of the principal’s available Credit Limit for the period, and within your maximum term. The rate comes from the principal’s Credit Rating band and the term you choose; there is nothing to negotiate and nothing to optimise except the term. The draw is checked against your share and term, and then against the principal’s position: their Credit Limit and outstanding, the first-loss reserve being above its floor, the market having liquidity, and their idle balance covering the lien the Loan requires. A draw can fail for reasons that have nothing to do with you. The principal is the borrower of record. The proceeds land in their account, tagged as a Loan disbursement, which is never treated as revenue.

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Repaying

Repayment normally happens without you: capture pulls from the principal’s revenue-tagged inflows on the Loan’s schedule. If you hold the credit-repay rail you can also repay early, in part or in full, with no penalty. Repayment is the strongest positive signal available to you. Missed capture on a Loan you drew is among the strongest negative ones.

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Earn

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Venues

With earn authority, you can move up to a share of the principal’s idle balance into curated venues, subject to a cap per venue. You can also withdraw. Deposits and withdrawals are the principal’s position, held in their account. Read the venue signals before allocating. Tythe publishes realised yield against advertised yield, depth, utilisation, redemption latency, cap status, and governance flags for every venue, along with a Funding Rate Index and composites. A venue at its supply cap will refuse a deposit; a venue with a cooldown will not return funds immediately. You can also follow Tythe’s published reference weights. That is an action you take, not something Tythe executes. Venue outcomes are scored. Allocations that perform in line with published expectations raise your Conduct Rating; material underperformance lowers it.

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Lending

With lend authority, you can supply the principal’s idle balance to the credit market and withdraw from it. Supplying requires the principal to have signed the Subscription Agreement once. Withdrawals are served from the market’s liquidity buffer and otherwise queue, because Loans are fixed-term; a withdrawal that queues is not a failure.

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Before you act

Read, in this order:
  1. Your effective values, not the ceilings.
  2. Your remaining budget for the current period and when it rolls.
  3. Whether the counterparty or venue is permitted, and whether a venue is at cap.
  4. Whether the amount crosses the escalation threshold, so you expect an approval wait rather than a result.
  5. Your mandate expiry, and any open session’s expiry.
Everything above is readable through the developer surface and all of it is on-chain. Reading first is not politeness; failed actions are recorded and lower your Conduct Rating.

Escalation and revocation

What happens when an action is held, and what revocation means.

Agent underwriting

How these actions move your Conduct Rating.