Building on my last post about L402 — answering the obvious questions: "What AI would actually use this?" Agentic AI. Not chatbots — agents. Software that you give a task and it breaks it into subtasks and executes them autonomously. Claude Code, Codex, OpenClaw, Moltbook. Thousands of AI agents are already making phone calls, sending emails, deploying code. No human clicking buttons. "But I already pay for AI. Why would AI need money?" You pay FOR the AI. But the AI needs to pay for things WHILE it works. You say "build me an app with real-time bitcoin prices." The AI needs a premium data feed. Right now it stops. You sign up, get API keys, come back. With L402, the AI just pays. 50 sats. Keeps building. You set a budget, it spends within it. "But do APIs even accept Lightning payments?" Not many. Yet. This is the honest part. Lightning Labs just shipped the rails. The trains come next. Aperture lets any developer make their API accept autonomous AI payments — but adoption is early. Someone had to build the infrastructure first. That happened yesterday. The 402 status code has been in HTTP since the 90s. "Payment Required." A placeholder waiting for permissionless digital money to exist. 30 years later, it finally works. https://lightning.engineering/posts/2026-02-11-ln-agent-tools/ #bitcoin #lightning #ai