Agent-First Pay v0.6: Wallet Operations Got a TUI and Backups
The v0.6 release added a full-screen wallet TUI, backup/restore commands, copyable payment artifacts, and a modular runtime shared across modes.
Agent-first does not mean human-hostile.
Payments are high stakes. Agents can operate them, but humans still need to inspect wallets, copy invoices, review history, adjust spend limits, and back up state. Agent-First Pay v0.6 added a terminal UI and backup workflow for that shared human/agent world.
The problem: payment state needs inspection, not just commands
A CLI command is good for one operation. Wallet operations are often a session: create a wallet, check balances, receive an invoice, copy a token, inspect history, update limits, and make sure state is backed up.
For that, a stream of single commands can feel too thin.
The change: a full-screen TUI joined the runtime
v0.6 added a ratatui-based TUI with sidebar wallet navigation, inline send/receive/create/close forms, balance detail, history browsing, spend-limit management, global config editing, and a real-time status bar.
The TUI does not replace the agent protocol. It gives humans a safer way to inspect and operate the same underlying payment state.
The data change: backup and restore became first-class
The release added global and per-network backup/restore commands using tar+zstd archives, with PostgreSQL pg_dump/psql support, merge vs full-overwrite modes, and extra directory mapping.
Payment state is operational state. It needs a recovery path that is part of the tool, not a wiki page of shell commands.
The usability change: tokens and invoices became copyable
The TUI detects long tokens, BOLT11 invoices, addresses, and similar payment artifacts in command output. It displays them in a dedicated strip and can copy them to the system clipboard with a hotkey.
That is a human affordance, but it protects agent workflows too: fewer manual copy mistakes around high-value strings.
Where this fits: one backend, multiple fronts
v0.6 also pushed the runtime toward modular modes with a shared session backend. CLI, pipe, REST, RPC, interactive, and TUI paths can share more payment logic instead of each growing its own behavior.
The direction is clear: the agent gets structured operations, the human gets an inspection surface, and both use the same wallet state.