Lightning Labs released pi402 on November 12, according to a PANews report published November 13, 2026, at 08:26 UTC+8, citing Crypto Briefing. The open-source extension is built for Pi coding agents to pay their own AI inference costs in bitcoin over the Lightning Network.
The intended flow is straightforward: an agent encounters a price, pays a Lightning invoice, then resumes work. PANews says pi402 uses the L402 protocol, pairing an HTTP 402 “Payment Required” response with a Lightning invoice. That supports charging by token usage rather than requiring an account, API key or credit card.
On the seller side, Aperture and Lightmeter can be used to accept payments. PANews reports that neither buyer nor seller needs to run a Lightning node; an Ark-based Wavelength wallet handles payments.