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Tether explains how WDK CLI sessions work for AI-controlled payments
Tether says the WDK CLI unlock session defaults to five minutes and can be shortened, re-unlocked to reset the timer, or set to no automatic expiry with a zero lifetime.
Tether outlined how its Wallet Development Kit, or WDK, CLI works in practice, describing a security model intended to keep wallet keys under the wallet owner’s control while still enabling automated payment flows. In Tether’s explanation, a human opens a timed session, and on macOS and Linux another process running as the wallet owner can request transactions if it can reach the unlocked wallet’s local endpoint. Tether says the CLI daemon does not require fresh approval of each payment, which shifts how protection is implemented to developers building integrations around the wallet. The documentation describes multiple WDK components, including terminal commands, a background daemon that holds the unlocked wallet, and a bundled Model Context Protocol, or MCP, server. MCP lets an AI client call structured software tools using the same local wallet, while Tether’s security model also specifies that a locked seed is encrypted with AES-256-GCM using a key derived through scrypt.
The company also described controls around session timing, saying the default session lasts five minutes from unlock and does not extend with ordinary activity. Tether says users can lock the wallet sooner, explicitly unlock it again to reset the timer, or disable automatic expiry by setting a zero lifetime, while emphasizing that session duration alone does not create per-payment amount limits or require a new decision about each recipient. (CryptoSlate)