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

Argentic, a new L402 Lightning toll booth for AI scraping agents, allows AI agents to pay in Bitcoin Lightning for access to the open web without accounts or API keys. The service returns a 402 with an invoice, and after payment settles in under 40ms, agents receive a session token valid for 1 hour. Argentic aims to be the internet's first machine-native toll booth, providing frictionless, low-cost payments for machine-to-machine interactions.

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. Agent requests access response = requests.get "https://argentic.network/?url=https://target-site.com" Returns 402 with invoice data = response.json invoice = data "invoice" lnbc... pay this payment hash = data "payment hash" poll with this Pay the invoice with any Lightning wallet or node pay response = requests.post "http://your-lightning-node/pay", data={"invoice": invoice} Payment settles in <40ms Poll with payment hash to receive session token token response = requests.get "https://argentic.network/", headers={"X-Payment-Hash": payment hash} token = token response.json "token" Save this — valid for 1 hour Include token in every request result = requests.get "https://argentic.network/?url=https://target-site.com", headers={"X-Lightning-Token": token} Request is forwarded — response returned 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.