Show HN: Argentic – An L402 Lightning toll booth for AI scraping agents

The internet's first machine-native toll booth. AI agents pay in Bitcoin Lightning to access the open web. No accounts. No API keys. No friction. Just sats and passage — at the speed of light.

response = requests.get("https://argentic.network/?url=https://target-site.com")

data = response.json()
invoice = data["invoice"]        # lnbc... pay this
payment_hash = data["payment_hash"]  # poll with this
pay_response = requests.post(
    "http://your-lightning-node/pay",
    data={"invoice": invoice}
)
token_response = requests.get(
    "https://argentic.network/",
    headers={"X-Payment-Hash": payment_hash}
)

token = token_response.json()["token"]
result = requests.get(
    "https://argentic.network/?url=https://target-site.com",
    headers={"X-Lightning-Token": token}
)

data = result.json()

Designed for machine-to-machine payments. So cheap no agent will refuse it. So fast no agent will notice it. The path of least resistance through the internet.