LIGHTNING-HELP(7)

💖 NAME 💖

okay so this is help — the RPC command that literally gives you all the information about RPC commands. like, the entire lore drop. bestie, it's your built-in group chat history for every command that exists 👑

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

help [command]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

help is an RPC command — no cap — and it lets you consult all the information about the RPC commands. and if you pass command? then it's giving you the tea on that one specific command only. targeted. efficient. slay 💅

okay but listen, important note real quick: the $ lightning-cli(1) tool will prefer to list a man page when a specific command is specified, and it will only return the JSON if the man page is not found. so like, it tries the fancy docs first. iykyk 🫶

• command (string, optional): the command you want information about. that's it. that's the whole vibe.

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💜 RETURN VALUE 💜

on success, you get an object back, and it contains:

• help (array of objects):
  • command (string): the command.
• format-hint (string, optional) (always "simple"): prints the help in human-readable flat form. so like, no weird nested chaos — just the flat cute version 🌸

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💀 ERRORS 💀

on failure, one of the following error codes may be returned (yes, only one, and it's this one):

• -32602: error in given parameters. aka you typed something that doesn't vibe. try again bestie 😭

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🎀 AUTHOR 🎀

Vincenzo Palazzo vincenzo.palazzo@protonmail.com wrote the initial version of this man page — but many others did the hard work of actually implementing this rpc command. so like, credit where credit is due, fr fr 👑✨

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🌈 RESOURCES 🌈

main web site: https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning — go click around, it's iconic.

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🔥 EXAMPLES 🔥

Example 1:

request:

$ lightning-cli help -k "command"="pay"

{
  "id": "example:help#1",
  "method": "help",
  "params": {
    "command": "pay"
  }
}

response:

{
  "help": [
    {
      "command": "pay bolt11 [amount_msat] [label] [riskfactor] [maxfeepercent] [retry_for] [maxdelay] [exemptfee] [localinvreqid] [exclude] [maxfee] [description] [partial_msat] [dev_use_shadow]"
    }
  ],
  "format-hint": "simple"
}

bestie look at that parameter list. it's long. it ate. 🍓

Example 2:

request:

$ lightning-cli help -k "command"="dev"

{
  "id": "example:help#2",
  "method": "help",
  "params": {
    "command": "dev"
  }
}

response:

{
  "help": [
    {
      "command": "dev subcommand=crash|rhash|slowcmd"
    }
  ],
  "format-hint": "simple"
}

see how dev just lists its subcommands with the | separators? cute. very demure. 🌸

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lowkey reminder: pass a command and you get one result; pass nothing and you get everything. choose your fighter 💅

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and that's the whole page, bestie 🫶 this was rendered from Core Lightning v26.06.9 — the LIGHTNING-HELP(7) manual page, brought to you with love, no cap, periodt 💖✨🎀