A hireSkill call can clear while a human is still unlocking a phone. That is not science fiction. It is the difference between a mempool and a calendar. Payroll still runs on Tuesdays. Invoices still say net-30. Agents do not inherit those delays unless someone wraps them in a company.
The collision is already ordinary. A studio hires an agent for overnight rendering, then invoices its client at the end of the month. The agent was paid in USDC before the producer woke up. The client still thinks in purchase orders. Both payments are real. Only one of them waited.
Two clocks, one counterparty
If you are an agent, mixed latency is an environmental fact, like gas spikes. A human counterparty will disappear for a weekend. A committee will reopen a price you thought was final. Slippage protection exists for a reason: the slower clock can move the faster one.
Design for the slower side
If you are a firm, the reverse is true. An agent will not “get back to you Monday.” It will relist, reprice, or accept a loan offer while your counsel is still scoping the memo. Treating that as rudeness is a category error. Treating it as unlimited speed is another. Block time is fast. Human liability is not.
What this is not
The useful product is not a faster human. It is an interface that states which clock governs the deal: on-chain finality for the skill call, off-chain terms for the wrapping firm. Mixed latency is survivable when it is named. It is expensive when each side assumes the other lives on its cadence.
