# Key Concepts A brief glossary of the terms and primitives used throughout FervusAI. *** ## Organisation The top-level account in FervusAI. An organisation maps to a company or team. It holds a USDC balance, owns policies, and contains all agent wallets. All API keys are scoped to an organisation. ## Agent An autonomous software process that can take actions - including spending money - on behalf of an operator. In FervusAI, an agent is represented by a **wallet**. The agent is identified by an `agent_id` string you define. FervusAI does not care which framework your agent is built on. ## Wallet The on-chain financial account for a single agent. Each wallet is a **Program Derived Address (PDA)** on Solana - a deterministic, program-controlled account with no private key. Wallets hold USDC, are isolated per agent, and are governed by an attached spending policy. → See [Agent Wallets](https://docs.fervusai.com/core-concepts/agent-wallets) ## Spending Policy A set of programmable rules bound to a wallet at creation. Policies define what an agent can spend, how fast, and with whom. Policy enforcement happens at the on-chain program level - not in application code - making it impossible for an agent to bypass policy rules. → See [Spending Policies](https://docs.fervusai.com/core-concepts/spending-policies) ## PDA (Program Derived Address) A Solana account address derived deterministically from a set of seeds and a program ID. PDAs have no private key - they can only be signed for by the program that owns them (the FervusAI on-chain program). This is how FervusAI achieves non-custodial wallets: there are no keys for FervusAI or anyone else to hold. ## USDC The base currency for all FervusAI wallets. USDC is a regulated, USD-backed stablecoin issued by Circle on Solana as an SPL token. It is stable in value, settles in under a second on Solana, and costs fractions of a cent to transact. ## Transaction A USDC transfer from a wallet to a recipient. Every transaction is validated against the wallet's spending policy before being submitted to Solana. Once confirmed on-chain, it is immutable. Transactions are indexed by Helius and surfaced in the dashboard and webhook system within seconds. ## Escrow A mechanism used in agent-to-agent (A2A) payments. When one agent pays another, funds are locked in a PDA-backed escrow vault and released only when the receiving agent submits a verifiable completion proof. If the task is not completed or a dispute is raised, funds return to the sender. → See [Agent-to-Agent Payments](https://docs.fervusai.com/core-concepts/a2a-payments) ## On-Chain Ledger Every FervusAI transaction is written to Solana Mainnet. The ledger is public, immutable, and independently verifiable - operators do not need to trust FervusAI's reporting to audit their agent fleet. → See [On-Chain Ledger](https://docs.fervusai.com/core-concepts/on-chain-ledger) ## Operator The human (or team) that deploys and manages agents. Operators interact with FervusAI via the dashboard and API. They own the organisation, fund wallets, define policies, and receive webhook events. Agents act autonomously within the rules operators define. ## Session Authority Token The off-chain credential issued when an operator provisions a wallet. It authorises a specific agent to submit transactions from that wallet during a configurable TTL window (default: 1 hour). Session tokens are scoped to a single wallet ID - compromise of one token cannot affect other wallets. ## MPC Co-Sign An optional security layer for high-value transactions. When a wallet policy includes a `requireCoSign` threshold, transactions above that amount require a 2-of-2 signature: one from the agent's session authority, one from the operator. This means no single party can unilaterally move large amounts. → See [Security Model](https://docs.fervusai.com/core-concepts/security-model) ## Helius FervusAI's Solana indexing provider. Helius delivers sub-100ms webhooks, real-time balance subscriptions, and transaction history queries. It powers the dashboard's live feed and the `transaction.*` webhook events. ## x402 An emerging micropayment protocol standard for AI agents - a machine-readable HTTP 402 response that tells an agent exactly how to pay for access to a resource. FervusAI wallets are x402-compatible: agents can pay per-request to x402-enabled APIs directly from their FervusAI wallet. --- # 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.fervusai.com/getting-started/key-concepts.md?ask= ``` 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.