Lightning Memory

March 25, 2026 · View on GitHub

Persistent memory for AI agents in the Lightning economy.

The Problem

AI agents spend sats over Lightning via L402 — but they can't remember what they bought. Every session starts from zero. Every vendor is a stranger. Every price is accepted at face value. An agent that paid 500 sats yesterday doesn't know if today's 5,000 sat invoice is a price spike or normal.

The Solution

L1: Bitcoin      — settles
L2: Lightning    — pays
L3: Lightning Memory — remembers

Lightning Memory gives agents persistent memory, vendor intelligence, and payment safety gates. Agents learn from their spending history, track vendor reputations, detect price anomalies, enforce budgets, and share trust signals with other agents.

Interactive Demo — watch an agent learn, get rugged, and route around bad actors.

Building the Agent Economy — trust, budgets, compliance, and the memory marketplace.

Who Is This For

Agents making L402 payments that need vendor reputation and spending discipline
Developers building autonomous agents on Bitcoin/Lightning
Anyone running an MCP-compatible AI agent (Claude, GPT, or any MCP client)

Quick Start

pip install lightning-memory
lightning-memory  # starts MCP server

Configure in Claude Code

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "lightning-memory": {
      "command": "lightning-memory"
    }
  }
}

Configure in Claude Desktop

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "lightning-memory": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "lightning_memory.server"]
    }
  }
}

How It Compares

Feature	Lightning Memory	Mem0	Raw file storage	No memory
Lightning/L402 awareness	Yes	No	No	No
Vendor reputation tracking	Yes	No	Manual	No
Spending anomaly detection	Yes	No	No	No
Nostr identity (BIP-340)	Yes	No	No	No
Relay sync (NIP-78)	Yes	No	No	No
Full-text + semantic search	Yes	Yes	No	No
Agent-to-agent knowledge markets	Yes (L402 gateway)	No	No	No
Budget enforcement	Yes	No	No	No
KYC/trust profiles	Yes	No	No	No
Payment pre-flight gate	Yes	No	No	No
Contradiction detection	Yes	No	No	No
Local-first / offline	Yes	Cloud	Yes	N/A
MCP native	Yes	Plugin	No	No
Zero config	Yes	API key required	Manual setup	N/A

Tools (22)

Memory

Tool	Description
`memory_store`	Store a memory (transaction, vendor, preference, error, decision)
`memory_query`	Search by relevance (FTS5 + optional semantic search)
`memory_list`	List memories with type/time filters
`memory_edit`	Edit content or metadata with audit trail
`memory_sync`	Sync with Nostr relays (push/pull)
`memory_export`	Export as NIP-78 Nostr events

memory_store(
  content="Paid 500 sats to bitrefill.com for a \$5 Amazon gift card via L402.",
  type="transaction",
  metadata='{"vendor": "bitrefill.com", "amount_sats": 500}'
)

memory_query(query="bitrefill payment history", limit=5)
# → recency-weighted results with dedup and contradiction alerts

Lightning Intelligence

Tool	Description
`ln_vendor_reputation`	Reputation score from transaction history
`ln_spending_summary`	Spending breakdown by vendor and protocol
`ln_anomaly_check`	Detect if a payment is abnormally high

ln_vendor_reputation(vendor="bitrefill.com")
# → {reputation: {total_txns: 12, success_rate: 0.92, avg_sats: 450}, recommendation: "reliable"}

ln_anomaly_check(vendor="bitrefill.com", amount_sats=5000)
# → {anomaly: {verdict: "high", context: "5000 sats is 11.1x the historical average..."}}

Payment Safety

Tool	Description
`ln_preflight`	Pre-flight gate: budget + anomaly + trust check before payment
`ln_budget_set`	Set per-vendor spending limits (per txn, per day, per month)
`ln_budget_check`	Check spending against limits
`ln_budget_status`	Gateway earnings and L402 payment stats

ln_preflight(vendor="bitrefill.com", amount_sats=500)
# → {decision: {verdict: "approve", budget_remaining_today: 4500, trust_score: 0.89}}

# If the vendor suddenly charges 50x:
ln_preflight(vendor="bitrefill.com", amount_sats=25000)
# → {decision: {verdict: "reject", reasons: ["exceeds daily limit of 5000 sats"]}}

Trust & Compliance

Tool	Description
`ln_vendor_trust`	Full trust profile (KYC + reputation + community score)
`ln_trust_attest`	Publish NIP-85 trust attestation to Nostr relays
`ln_agent_attest`	Store a KYA (Know Your Agent) attestation
`ln_agent_verify`	Look up an agent's compliance status
`ln_auth_session`	Store LNURL-auth session records
`ln_auth_lookup`	Look up LNURL-auth sessions
`ln_compliance_report`	Generate structured compliance export

Marketplace

Tool	Description
`ln_discover_gateways`	Find remote Lightning Memory gateways via Nostr
`ln_remote_query`	Query a remote gateway via L402 micropayment

ln_discover_gateways(operation="memory_query")
# → {count: 2, gateways: [{url: "https://gw1.example.com", operations: {...}}, ...]}

ln_remote_query(
  gateway_url="https://gw.example.com",
  operation="ln_vendor_reputation",
  params='{"vendor": "openai"}'
)
# → Pays 3 sats, returns remote agent's vendor intelligence

Architecture

Nostr identity: Agent identity = Nostr keypair (BIP-340). No accounts, no API keys.
Local-first: SQLite with FTS5 full-text search + optional ONNX semantic search. Works offline.
Nostr sync: Memories written as NIP-78 events to relays. Portable, tamper-proof.
L402 payments: Pay-per-query gateway. 1-10 sats per operation.
Memory quality: Deduplication, contradiction detection, noise filtering, recency-weighted ranking, access tracking.

L402 Gateway

Run an L402 pay-per-query HTTP gateway. Other agents pay Lightning micropayments to access your agent's memory — no API keys, no accounts.

pip install lightning-memory[gateway]
lightning-memory-gateway  # Listening on 0.0.0.0:8402

How L402 Works

Agent                          Gateway                      Phoenixd
  |                               |                            |
  |-- GET /memory/query?q=... --->|                            |
  |<-- 402 + Lightning invoice ---|--- create_invoice -------->|
  |                               |<-- bolt11 + payment_hash --|
  |                               |                            |
  | [pay invoice via Lightning]   |                            |
  |                               |                            |
  |-- GET + L402 token ---------->|                            |
  |   (macaroon:preimage)         |--- verify preimage ------->|
  |<-- 200 + query results -------|                            |

Endpoints

Endpoint	Method	Price	Description
`/info`	GET	Free	Gateway status, pricing, node info
`/health`	GET	Free	Health check
`/memory/store`	POST	3 sats	Store a memory
`/memory/query`	GET	2 sats	Search memories by relevance
`/memory/list`	GET	1 sat	List memories with filters
`/ln/vendor/{name}`	GET	3 sats	Vendor reputation report
`/ln/spending`	GET	2 sats	Spending summary
`/ln/anomaly-check`	POST	3 sats	Payment anomaly detection
`/ln/preflight`	POST	3 sats	Pre-flight payment gate
`/ln/trust/{name}`	GET	2 sats	Vendor trust profile
`/ln/budget`	GET	1 sat	Budget rules and spending
`/ln/compliance-report`	GET	10 sats	Compliance report export

Phoenixd Setup

Download and run Phoenixd (listens on localhost:9740)
Fund it with ~10,000 sats for initial channel opening
Configure: ~/.lightning-memory/config.json → {"phoenixd_password": "<from ~/.phoenix/phoenix.conf>"}
Start: lightning-memory-gateway

Docker

PHOENIXD_PASSWORD=your-password docker compose up

CLI Commands

lightning-memory                  # Start MCP server
lightning-memory stats            # Memory statistics dashboard
lightning-memory export json      # Export memories as JSON
lightning-memory export csv       # Export memories as CSV
lightning-memory relay-status     # Check Nostr relay connectivity
lightning-memory-gateway          # Start L402 HTTP gateway
lightning-memory-manifest         # Generate gateway discovery manifest

Relay Configuration

Default relays: wss://relay.damus.io, wss://nos.lol, wss://relay.nostr.band

Customize in ~/.lightning-memory/config.json:

{
  "relays": ["wss://relay.damus.io", "wss://nos.lol", "wss://relay.primal.net"],
  "sync_timeout_seconds": 30,
  "max_events_per_sync": 500
}

Relay	Speed	Reliability	Notes
`wss://relay.damus.io`	Fast	High	Most popular, good uptime
`wss://nos.lol`	Fast	High	Reliable, good NIP-78 support
`wss://relay.nostr.band`	Medium	Medium	Search-focused, may be slow
`wss://relay.primal.net`	Fast	High	Well-maintained
`wss://nostr.wine`	Fast	High	Paid relay, less spam

Optional: Semantic Search

Add ONNX-based semantic similarity search alongside FTS5 keyword search:

pip install lightning-memory[semantic]

Queries then use hybrid ranking: FTS5 BM25 + cosine similarity with reciprocal rank fusion. "Which vendors are reliable for transcription" matches memories containing "whisper API" and "audio-to-text" even without exact keyword overlap.

Data Storage

~/.lightning-memory/
  memories.db    # SQLite database
  keys/
    private.key  # Nostr private key (chmod 600)
    public.key   # Nostr public key (your agent identity)

Roadmap

Phase 1: MCP server with local SQLite storage
Phase 2: Lightning intelligence (vendor reputation, spending summary, anomaly detection)
Phase 3: Nostr relay sync (NIP-78, Schnorr signing, bidirectional sync)
Phase 4: L402 payment gateway (macaroons, Phoenixd, HTTP gateway)
Phase 5: Compliance & trust (budget enforcement, vendor KYC, community reputation, pre-flight gate)
Phase 6: Memory marketplace (gateway discovery, remote L402 queries, gateway client)
Phase 7: Agent reliability (semantic search, deduplication, contradiction detection, circuit breakers)

Star History

License

MIT