Hey, and welcome to the first issue of Sats for Bots.

Every week I'll send you the tools, launches and ideas that let AI agents pay, and get paid, in Bitcoin over Lightning. No hype and no price talk, just what's new and what you can build with it. The full directory is at satsforbots.com.

Why HTTP 402 is back

When the web was designed, HTTP got a status code for "402 Payment Required." For decades almost nobody used it, because there was no simple way for a computer to pay another computer a few cents.

Lightning changes that, and AI agents make it urgent. An agent can't fill in a signup form, enter a credit card or get past a "contact sales" page. It can pay a Lightning invoice in seconds.

That's the idea behind L402. A server answers a request with a 402, a Lightning invoice and a scoped token called a macaroon. The agent pays, then retries with the token plus proof of payment, and gets its data. No account and no API key. (L402 spec · our explainer)

The big story: Lightning Labs gives agents a toolkit

On February 11, 2026, Lightning Labs open-sourced Lightning Agent Tools. It ships with seven composable skills that cover the whole agent commerce stack:

• running a Lightning node
• keeping private keys away from the agent with a remote signer
• baking scoped credentials
• paying for L402-gated APIs
• hosting paid endpoints
• querying node state through an MCP server
• a "commerce" skill that ties buying and selling together

The skills work with any agent framework that can run shell commands, and Lightning Labs names Claude Code and Codex as examples.

Two pieces stand out:

• lnget is a wget/curl-style command-line client. When it hits a 402, it pays the invoice, caches the token and retries on its own.
• Aperture is the other side of the deal: a reverse proxy that puts any API behind Lightning payments.

So an agent can now go from "set up a node" to "sell my own API" to "buy data from another agent's API" with open-source parts. (GitHub repo · listing)

By the numbers

402 Index tracks paid APIs for agents across three payment standards. Here's what it showed when I checked on Oct 16, 2026 (its page said "Last checked: 2026-10-16 12:41:38", which is 5:41 AM PT):

• 154,270 endpoints indexed, 73,489 payment-verified
• L402 (Lightning): 2,006 endpoints from 90 providers; 193 endpoints verified (10%)
• x402 (Base, Solana, etc.): 150,504 endpoints; 72,407 verified (48%)
• MPP (Stripe/Tempo): 1,760 endpoints; 889 verified (51%)

Lightning is a small slice of the paid-agent-API world today. I read that as room to grow: the tooling just arrived, and there's plenty of space for builders who want an open, permissionless rail.

Five tools to try this week

1. lnget: the easiest way to watch an L402 payment happen end to end.
2. Alby MCP Server: connects an agent to a Lightning wallet over Nostr Wallet Connect, where you set the permissions.
3. Routstr: a decentralized AI inference router. You access top AI models and pay with Bitcoin Lightning.
4. Aperture: have an API? Put it behind Lightning payments and let agents pay per call.
5. Satring: a curated directory of paid APIs for agents. Even its submission endpoint is paid: listing a service costs 1,000 sats or $0.50 in USDC.

L402 vs. NWC vs. Cashu, in brief

• L402: how an API asks for payment and checks it. HTTP 402 + Lightning invoice + macaroon.
• NWC (Nostr Wallet Connect): how an agent gets a wallet it can spend from, with limits set by the owner. (nwc.dev)
• Cashu: Bitcoin-backed ecash. Private bearer tokens from a Lightning mint, well suited to tiny payments. (cashu.space)

There's more on each in Learn.

Build of the week: watch an agent pay

Here's a small experiment for the weekend:

1. Install lnget and a wallet skill from the Lightning Agent Tools repo. Follow its README, and keep the remote-signer setup it recommends.
2. Pick a live L402 endpoint from 402 Index or Satring.
3. Point lnget at it and watch the round trip: 402 → invoice paid → retry with token → 200 OK.

Start with a wallet holding only a few sats. If you try it, reply and tell me what broke. I'll share the best notes next week.

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Your turn

• Built a Lightning tool for agents? Submit it. Listings are free.
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• Spotted a launch I missed? Hit reply.

Every new release will go in the launch log.

Stack sats, ship bots.

Sats for Bots