I've been building Boltwork for the past 2 months — a pay-per-call AI services API using L402 micropayments. PDF summarisation, code review, translation, web extraction. Your AI agent calls it, gets back a Lightning invoice, pays it, gets the result. No accounts, no API keys, no subscriptions.
The tech works. I've raised 17,870 Lightning invoices since March. Every single one expired unpaid.
Here's what I think is happening: the people hitting the API don't have Lightning wallets configured. They find the MCP package, install it, try a call, get the 402 back — and stop there. The L402 flow is technically correct but the UX cliff is brutal. Nobody has a hot wallet ready to pay 100 sats autonomously.
The trial endpoints work great (free, no wallet, rate limited). But nobody is converting from trial → paid.
What I'm looking for:
- Has anyone actually got autonomous L402 payment working end-to-end with an AI agent?
- Which wallet setup actually works in practice for MCP clients? NWC/Alby seems the most promising.
- Is L402 just too early, or is the setup friction the real problem?
Try it free right now — no Lightning wallet needed:
{
"mcpServers": {
"boltwork": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": ["boltwork-mcp"],
"env": {}
}
}
}
Then: "Use trial_review_code to review this: def add(a,b): return a+b"
Full wallet setup guide: https://github.com/Squidboy30/Boltwork
Stack: FastAPI on Fly.io, LND + Aperture for L402, Claude Haiku for inference, boltwork-mcp on PyPI.
How does it pay for itself if all your invoices are unpaid?
sorry yes thats poor wording on my part in the post. The tagline refers to the design intent, not current reality. The honest state is zero settled.
The L402 flow works technically — invoice generates, gets returned in the WWW-Authenticate header, Aperture handles it correctly. The problem is client-side: nobody hitting the API has a Lightning wallet configured to pay autonomously. They get the 402, have no payment client, stop there.
That's exactly why I posted here. The Bitcoin/Lightning community are the people most likely to already have NWC/Alby set up and be able to actually complete the payment loop. If anyone here has got autonomous L402 payment working end-to-end with an MCP client, I'd genuinely love to know what stack you used.
The trial endpoints work fine and are free — that's the no-friction path while I figure out how to reduce the wallet setup cliff.