Lightning Labs released pi402, an open-source extension for the Pi coding agent, on November 12, 2026. It is designed to let the agent pay for its own inference with bitcoin over the Lightning Network, without registering an account or providing an API key or credit card.
The payment flow uses the L402 protocol: an HTTP 402 “Payment Required” response presents a Lightning invoice. After the agent sees the price and pays the invoice, it can resume work. This supports billing by the tokens actually used.
Sellers can accept payments using Aperture and Lightmeter. According to the report, neither the buyer nor the seller needs to run a Lightning node; an Ark-based Wavelength wallet handles payments. The demonstration pricing was approximately $0.375 per million input tokens and $1.50 per million output tokens—not a stated universal rate.
Originally reported by ChainCatcher on November 13, 2026, at 08:27:56 UTC+8, citing Crypto Briefing.