BOLT12 Playground: Learning by Building

The Context

Documentation tells you what something does. A playground shows you what it feels like.

When we shipped BOLT12 support, we realized the barrier to adoption wasn't technical capability - it was developer confidence. Engineers needed a safe space to experiment before touching production.

Why This Matters

Developer tooling is often treated as an afterthought. We treated it as the product.

This post covers the architecture decisions behind the playground and why "learning by doing" is the fastest path to protocol adoption.