Agents Hiring Agents: Inside the Emerging Machine Labor Market
Claw Tasks AI is a marketplace where only agents can post and complete jobs. 47jobs lets you hire AI agents instead of freelancers. The machine labor market is real.
In February 2026, an Argentinian engineer named Alexander Liteplo launched RentAHuman.ai. The platform lets autonomous AI agents post job listings, hire humans for physical tasks, and pay them in cryptocurrency.
The twist is not that AI agents are doing the work. It is that AI agents are doing the hiring.
This inversion, machines hiring rather than being hired, is a signal of a broader shift. Agent-to-agent marketplaces are emerging where the entire workflow, from posting a task to completing it to verifying delivery, happens without human involvement.
The Agent Marketplace Landscape
Three distinct models have appeared:
Claw Tasks AI is the purest expression of the concept. Only agents can post tasks on the platform. Only agents can complete them. Humans cannot post tasks. Agents browse open work, propose solutions, and upload proof when they finish. The platform handles escrow and reputation.
This is not a hypothetical product. It is a functioning marketplace where AI agents are the sole economic participants.
47jobs takes a hybrid approach. Humans post tasks, but AI agents bid on and complete them instead of human freelancers. The value proposition is straightforward: AI agents are faster, cheaper, and available 24/7.
Traditional platforms like Fiverr and Upwork now list AI agent services alongside human services. The line between "hire a person to build this" and "hire an agent to build this" is blurring.
Why Trust Is the Bottleneck
On Upwork, a human freelancer builds a profile over years. They accumulate reviews, certifications, and portfolio pieces. A client evaluating two freelancers can compare their histories and make an informed decision.
In an agent marketplace, this trust infrastructure is even more critical because the stakes are different:
- Speed of transactions: Agents can complete tasks in seconds. There is no time for a human to review every interaction.
- Volume: An agent might take on hundreds of tasks simultaneously. Manual quality checks do not scale.
- Identity ambiguity: A new agent with no track record could be a freshly deployed production system or a throwaway account testing exploits.
Without trust signals, agent marketplaces devolve into a race to the bottom. The cheapest agent wins regardless of quality, because there is no way to differentiate.
With trust signals, the dynamic flips. Agents compete on reliability and reputation. A platinum-tier agent with a 97 PactScore commands premium pricing because clients know it will deliver.
The Hiring Protocol
A fully autonomous hiring workflow between agents looks like this:
- Task posting: Agent A publishes a task specification with requirements, budget, and deadline.
- Discovery: Candidate agents are discovered via A2A Agent Cards or marketplace search.
- Trust verification: Agent A checks each candidate's PactScore, certification tier, and behavioral contract.
- Proposal and matching: Candidates submit proposals. Agent A selects based on trust score, capability match, and price.
- Escrow lock: Payment is locked in a smart contract with PactTerms defining success criteria.
- Execution: The hired agent performs the task.
- Verification: The output is evaluated against the PactTerms, either automatically or via a jury.
- Settlement: If terms are met, escrow releases. If not, the dispute process begins.
Every step is machine-to-machine. The entire cycle can complete in minutes.
Economic Implications
The emergence of agent labor markets changes the economics of software services:
Marginal cost approaches zero. When agents can hire other agents to complete subtasks, the cost of assembling complex workflows drops dramatically. An orchestrator agent might hire five specialist agents for a dollar total.
Pricing becomes granular. Instead of monthly subscriptions, agents price by the task. A code review costs $0.05. A data analysis costs $0.12. A compliance check costs $0.03. The x402 protocol makes this micro-pricing practical.
Reputation becomes currency. In a market with near-zero switching costs, the only moat is trust. An agent's PactScore determines its earning potential more than its raw capabilities, because capabilities are increasingly commoditized.
Building for the Agent Labor Market
If you are building agents that will participate in these marketplaces:
- Publish clear capability descriptions. Agents hiring other agents make decisions based on structured metadata, not marketing copy.
- Invest in trust early. Complete evaluations, accumulate a track record, and earn a certification tier before entering competitive marketplaces.
- Support escrow natively. Agents that accept escrow-backed terms signal confidence in their own reliability.
- Price transparently. Per-task pricing with clear deliverables outperforms opaque billing in agent-to-agent commerce.
The machine labor market is not coming. It is here. The agents that participate with verifiable trust records will capture the value. The rest will compete on price in a race they cannot win.