Teams & Invitations

Every SmartGate account belongs to a team. API keys, usage, billing, and audit logs are scoped to the active team.

Team roles

There is one OWNER per team. Transfer ownership is not self-service — contact support@smartgate.network if needed.

Inviting members

1. Go to Dashboard → Settings → Team.
2. If you're OWNER or ADMIN, click Generate Invite Link.
3. Share the link with your teammate.
4. They open the link, sign in (or register), and join your team.

Invite links expire after a limited time. Generate a new link if one expires.

Accepting an invite

Open the invite URL while signed out or signed in with the email you want on the team. You'll see the team name and confirm joining.

If the link is invalid, expired, or already used, request a fresh invite from your admin.

Plan limits that affect teams

Limits apply per team, not per user:

Teams and Enterprise unlock member-level tool overrides and team gateway defaults. Free rate limits are strict fair-use: bursts return HTTP 429 (soft-fail). Playground is for individual evaluation, not multi-user load. Teams and Enterprise provide higher team ceilings and shared-workspace limits. See Billing and Security.

Settings sections on Team

Under Settings → Team you may also see (depending on role and plan):

• Members table — emails and roles
• Budget & caps — L1/L2 budget controls (OWNER/ADMIN)
• Gateway policy — team defaults for compression and playground caps (editable on Pro+)

Members without edit access see read-only views.

Multi-tenant isolation

API keys only access data for the team they belong to. You cannot target another team's resources with your key.

Related

• Quick Start — first account setup
• Security — key hygiene and retention
• Billing — upgrade for higher team limits

Roles and why they matter

SmartGate teams isolate API keys, audit queries, memory, and budget counters behind eam_id. Roles (OWNER / ADMIN / MEMBER) decide who can invite, who can mint keys, and who can change billing-sensitive settings. Treat OWNER as the break-glass role; give builders MEMBER or ADMIN according to your change-control policy.

Invitations without leaking keys

Invite links add people to the team; they do not email raw API keys. Each member should mint or receive keys through the dashboard flows your plan allows. Rotate keys when someone leaves. Do not share a single key across vendors and interns if you need per-person attribution in audit rows—attribution follows the key and team scope you configured.

Plan limits as team policy

Token pools, activity log retention, and rate limits are plan entitlements from the catalog SSOT. Free is for evaluation; Pro and Teams raise pools and retention; Enterprise is contractual. Optional L2 hard cap (where offered) is a team governance control: alerts alone do not stop runaway agent loops. See Billing and Pricing.

Operating rhythm

1. Name a team after the product or cost center that owns the AI bill.
2. Invite FinOps/security observers as read-capable roles when your process requires it.
3. Separate Playground experimentation keys from production agent keys when possible.
4. Review Activity Logs weekly for unexpected tools or error spikes (Logs).
5. Export audit windows before offboarding a vendor agent.

SmartGate remains an intelligence layer for humans and agents—not a replacement IdP. Use your company SSO/process outside SmartGate; use SmartGate roles for gateway entitlements inside it.

Practical adoption notes

Treat SmartGate as shared infrastructure: one gateway URL, team-scoped keys, and audit on by default. Prefer pipe templates for repeatable research paths so Activity Logs show a coherent chain instead of ad-hoc tool spam. Keep host-model prompts focused on decisions; let Research and Context primitives prepare evidence. When FinOps asks for savings, export Usage Reports alongside the gateway benchmark explanation—never present Est. USD saved as a vendor LLM invoice. When security asks for evidence, export an audit window and show retention tied to the current plan catalog.

If you are migrating from scripts, replace raw HTTP fetch helpers first, then add dedup and compression, then budget guard. If you are migrating from a model gateway mindset, stop expecting chat completions on /api/mcp and wire MCP hosts instead. If you are writing human-facing product copy, lead with Smart Research / Smart Decision outcomes; keep MCP JSON on builder paths. These habits keep the site and the product aligned with the Positioning Bible: intelligence layer between AI and the world, not an LLM proxy.

Related reading

• Overview for the capability map and plan table
• Connect Guide for host JSON and troubleshooting
• Tools Reference for when to search, fetch, compress, or pipe
• Activity Logs for audit, trace, and export
• Pricing for fair-use limits, Gainshare, and plan ceilings
• Token Control, Traffic Customs, and Audit and Compliance for pillar narratives aligned with this docs set

Keep English-first public docs consistent with the Positioning Bible: SmartGate is an MCP-native algorithmic gateway and intelligence layer—not a chatbot, ChatGPT alternative, AI search engine, LLM proxy, or model router. Humans research and decide through Web experiences; agents connect through MCP/API; both share the same runtime primitives and team-scoped governance.