Originally Posted by bgriff

I am not familiar with that one-hour limitation. Recently Delta has finally sorted it out where they can save your passport to your profile so you don't have to show a passport to anyone at all until boarding*, but even before that was the case, when OLCI'ing for an international flight I would sometimes only show my passport to an agent at the gate shortly before boarding and never had any issues.

*If anyone else has had trouble getting your passport to stick in your profile, as I did for a while: the next time you have an international flight, make a point to check in at a kiosk. The kiosks seem to be uniquely able to save your passport to your Delta profile so that after that you can OLCI for international flights without needing any further document checks.