1
You are a tenant
When you sign in and get an API key, T3N gives you a tenant identity — an opaque ID (
did:t3n:...) that everything you own is scoped to: your data, your contracts, your credits. It’s not derived from your wallet, and you never construct it yourself — you always read it back from an authenticated session.2
Your data lives in a private map, by default
Anything you store (an API key, a config value, application state) goes into a tenant KV map, namespaced under your tenant ID so no other tenant can ever read or write it. Access within your own maps is opt-in — you explicitly say what a contract is allowed to touch. See Create Tenant KV Maps.
3
Logic that touches sensitive data runs as a TEE contract
A TEE contract is a small Rust program, compiled to WebAssembly, that runs inside confidential-computing hardware (a TEE). The point of running it there instead of on your own server: the contract can process user PII and call third-party APIs on a user’s behalf, without your infrastructure — or you — ever seeing the plaintext. See Write your first TEE contract.
4
Agents act on delegated permission, not blanket trust
An AI agent doesn’t get standing access to anything. A user (or you, acting on your own tenant) explicitly grants an agent permission to call specific functions on a specific contract, optionally scoped to specific external hosts it’s allowed to reach. No grant, no access — the contract still runs, the outbound call just gets denied. See Agent Auth.
5
PII moves through the enclave, never through your code
When a contract needs to send a user’s real name, email, or other personal data to a third-party API, it doesn’t handle that data directly. It sends a request with
{{profile.field}} placeholder markers, and the host substitutes the real values inside the enclave at the last moment. Your contract — and anything logging or inspecting it — only ever sees the placeholder. See Placeholders in outbound calls.Where to go next
Quickstart
Get an authenticated call working in under 10 minutes.
Write your first TEE contract
The full walkthrough, with a real worked example.
Agent Auth
How agents authenticate and get delegated permission.
Common Errors
Bookmark this one — you’ll want it.