out of interests sake, is there a way to copy a light onto a point?
(using the normal as a facing vector)

i know it can be done with point instancing but i'm wondering if there's a way to do it in sops or at object level…

what would be the benefit?
do you expect to see light contribution directly in the viewport?

if you are after procedural technique that will create as many lights as you have points, instancing may be the only way

but if you have several lights in the scene and you would like to attach them to points of some geometry, you can use Rivet Object as a parent of the light and specify the point number as a Point Group
It can also take care of orientation according to N and up

aah, i see, i didn't know Rivet could read up and normal vectors… sweet

i just wanted to place some area lights on points i got from geometry and didn't really want to do point instancing.

thanks