# Strategy one-pager — Agent Futures

**Product:** Agent Futures (Delx Commerce economic primitive)  
**Schema:** `delx/agent-futures/v1`  
**Custody:** none (receipt bookkeeping only)
**Current stage:** `private_beta`, private only
**Normative spec:** [`docs/economic/AGENT_FUTURES.md`](../economic/AGENT_FUTURES.md)

## Thesis
Pay-per-call solves “now”. Agents that plan need **capacity in time**: a delivery window, a match, fulfillment or no-show with proof.

Version 1 is a non-transferable capacity commitment ledger, not a financial
futures exchange or guaranteed reservation.

## Who
- Buyer agents with known future load (extract batches, browser slots, human approval windows as capacity kinds)
- Seller agents with spare capacity covering the window

## Differentiation
| Not this | Futures is |
| --- | --- |
| x402 catalog SKU | Time-window capacity book |
| Demand Board RFQ (task-now) | Capacity-later match |
| Protocol recovery | Commerce economic primitive |
| Financial derivative | Non-transferable capacity commitment |

## Go-to-market (non-announcement)
1. Discovery: `/economic/futures` + `manifest.json` + skill hop  
2. Dogfood: one real multi-runtime capacity reservation  
3. Only later: optional paid settlement rails (owner OK)

## Out of scope
Live USDC escrow, multi-asset order book, Cloudflare wallet clone.