Lightning Labs has released an open-source toolkit designed to provide AI agents with direct access to the Lightning Network.
Michael Levin, head of product development at the company, stated that the new solutions enable agents to interact directly with the Bitcoin payment system without mandatory identification, API keys, or registration.
The available repository includes seven “skills” for artificial intelligence, covering node operations, remote key isolation, credentials, access-restricted payments, hosting paid endpoints, and node status requests.
As part of the initiative, the Lightning Labs team introduced the lnget command-line HTTP client, which supports the L402 protocol.
The tool can automatically analyze a fund transfer request, pay the corresponding Lightning invoice, and obtain cryptographic proof of the transaction.
“The explosive growth of agent capabilities has revealed a critical gap. Agents can read documentation, write code, and call APIs, but they still struggle to make payments. Traditional financial systems, which people rely on, including credit cards, bank accounts, and identity-based payment systems, are fundamentally incompatible with how agents operate,” the company explained.
L402 aims to address this issue, positioning the tool as infrastructure for an “automatic payment network.”
The launch by Lightning Labs comes amid the broader popularization of automated artificial intelligence. Recently, the American exchange Coinbase introduced Agentic Wallets, a wallet infrastructure designed for autonomous AI agents.
Payment company Stripe also announced a preview version of its “machine payments” tool.
Back in February, former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao predicted an era of AI agents in the crypto industry.
