---
name: abdm-m3
description: Use when building, debugging or testing ABDM Milestone 3: raising a consent request, tracking its status, reading consent artefacts, and fetching encrypted health records as an HIU. Carries the endpoints, the consent rules, every recorded error code and the M3 test matrix. Also carries the scaffolding loop that builds it flow by flow and the loop from a failed call to a named fix, in references/.
---

# ABDM M3, consent and fetching

Generated from the ABDM Developer Portal on 2026-09-15, catalogue version 2026.08.24. Every fact below comes from a page in that portal, which is the place to look when this file does not carry enough.

This file is a snapshot. Re-download it from https://abdm-docs.dev.eka.care/skills/abdm-m3/SKILL.md when it is older than the work you are doing.
If the abdm-docs MCP server is connected, trust its answers over this file: it serves the current catalogue and stamps every response with its catalogue_version, which you can compare against the version above.

## What you can do with M3

- Ask a patient, through their consent manager, for records another provider holds.
- Track that request through a grant, a denial, a revocation and an expiry.
- Receive the encrypted records on your callback, decrypt them, and acknowledge receipt.
- Handle one request that produces several consent artefacts, which is the normal case.

What it cannot do yet matters as much. Read **Before anything else** below before assuming a capability is one endpoint away.

## What is in this folder

- **Scaffold.** Build it flow by flow against the sandbox, as a loop that ends on an observed result rather than on a call returning 200. [references/scaffold.md](references/scaffold.md)
- **Integrate.** 25 operations, with their hosts and headers. [references/integrate.md](references/integrate.md)
- **Debug.** The loop from a failed call to a named fix, and 95 recorded error codes. [references/debug.md](references/debug.md)
- **Test.** 32 test cases, each with the call it makes and what to see when it passes. [references/test.md](references/test.md)

This file is the map. Each line above is a file beside it, opened one at a time rather than read through.

## Before anything else

- Nothing here has been run against the ABDM sandbox. Treat request and response shapes as unconfirmed, and check a response before you rely on its shape.
- You act as the HIU. The HIE-CM holds the consent and asks the patient on your behalf. No artefact, no records.
- The patient must be known to you by ABHA address before you can raise a request.
- One consent request can produce more than one artefact. Store the request id and every artefact id.
- Records arrive encrypted on your callback URL. Decrypt them, then acknowledge receipt to the gateway.
- NHA's schema declares `consentId` and `consentRequestId` as UUIDs while NHA's own examples give values that are not. Do not validate them as UUIDs. Recorded as correction C3 in catalogue/openapi/corrections.

## Practices that hold across every call

- Read the body, not only the status. A refusal often names the field in its body while the status says nothing useful, and a bad clock can arrive as a 404.
- When ABDM publishes a value, read it rather than hard coding what it currently says. That covers a parameter, such as the encryption algorithm the certificate endpoints return beside the key, and it covers an enumeration: councils, courses, states, districts, purposes and HI types all have master data calls, and a table typed into your source is a table that goes stale silently. Refuse to act on a published value you do not recognise rather than falling back to a default.
- Read every field in a response, not the one you came for. The M1 certificate call returns the padding next to the key, and a catalogue that recorded only the key cost an integrator a day rediscovering it.
- Prove an assumption against a call that is able to disagree with you. An endpoint that refuses every input with one message cannot tell you which input was right, and testing against it turns a correct answer into a ruled out one.
- Suspect the transport before the data. When a call refuses a value you believe in, check the encryption, the headers and the clock before you doubt the number. Those failures are reported as if the value were wrong.
- Do not carry an encryption path from one module to another. The padding, the certificate and the key size belong to the registry you are calling, and a path that works in one module produces a value another cannot read.
- Never log a sensitive value before you encrypt it, and never send one to a remote service to be encrypted. Both move the leak rather than removing it.
- Generate a fresh REQUEST-ID for every call and log it before sending. Once a call has failed it is the only handle on it.
- Check the host on any sample before you copy it. Published samples mix production and sandbox hosts while describing sandbox behaviour, so a request copied whole can be correct in every respect except where it is pointed. This costs an afternoon because the failure looks like credentials.
- Do not validate an identifier more strictly than the platform does. A schema that types a field as a UUID is not a promise that the values are UUIDs, and ABDM ships examples that are not. Refusing a value ABDM would have accepted turns your own client into the thing that broke, and the rejection never reaches a log anyone is reading.
- Read a plural response as plural. A verification returns an accounts array, a consent request produces more than one artefact, and taking the first element is the bug that assigns a visit to the wrong record or drops half a fetch. Store the collection and decide from its length; length one is a case, not the normal case.
- A documented callback path is not a documented callback payload. Several ABDM callbacks name a route and record no body anywhere, so a handler written against an assumed shape fails on the first real delivery, asynchronously, where nobody is watching. Log the whole body on arrival before you parse it.
- Decode a token before you use it. A call that hands you a token has not necessarily handed you the token the next call wants: an M1 login returns one whose JWT payload reads `"typ": "Transfer"`, and every profile call refuses it while blaming its age. The claims are base64 and need no library, and reading them turns a confusing refusal into an obvious one.
- When a journey carries the same parameter through two calls, check whether it is the same value in both. An array like `scope` is a combination the operation validates as a whole, and the combination can legitimately change between opening a transaction and confirming it. Reusing the opening value is refused as though the parameter itself were wrong.
- Do not infer which path an identifier belongs to from where that identifier is most discussed. Aadhaar fills ABDM's enrolment documentation and is also a login identifier, so wiring it to enrolment quietly creates a second account for everyone who already holds one. Send every identifier to the lookup first and let the answer pick the path.
- Do not match an error code with string equality. ABDM returns codes carrying trailing punctuation and whitespace, observed as `"code": "ABDM-9999: "`. Trim and compare on the prefix, or the branch you wrote for that code never runs.
- A failure does not always carry a body. An HTTP 401 with zero bytes was observed on a PHR profile call with no user token. Handle the empty body before you parse, or your client throws on the simplest failure there is.
- On a `HIS-` response from the registries, read `details[0].code` before the top level `code`. The outer code and the HTTP status describe the wrong thing: a 422 saying the data was wrong carried `HIS-403`, not permitted, one level down. Acting on the outer code sends you hunting through a payload that is fine.
- Repeated bad credentials lock the client. Eight consecutive failed session calls locked a sandbox client for about eight minutes, and every attempt in that window returned `Invalid user credentials`, which reads as a wrong secret rather than a temporary lock. Back off on an auth failure rather than retrying, and never loop a credential check.
- Send TIMESTAMP in UTC with milliseconds and a trailing Z. Local time is refused, sometimes as a 404.
- Cache a public certificate with a validity window rather than forever. A rotation fails every encrypted call at once, and a cache with no expiry cannot recover on its own.

## Where the detail is

- Every endpoint, with its body fields and responses: /docs/hiecm/v3/api/m3
- The flows as diagrams: /docs/hiecm/v3/milestones/m3
- Every error code across modules: /docs/hiecm/v3/reference/error-codes
- Sandbox test data: /docs/hiecm/v3/reference/data-dictionary
- Terms: /docs/hiecm/v3/getting-started/glossary