I can see all the steps like git clone,

git clone has nothing to do with "env setup" this is brining the code, you cannot skip that one, that said, this is why the git itself is cached on the host machine, so it is fast

... There may be some odd package that need to be installed because one of our DS is experimenting ... But all that we can see what is happening.

even if everything is preinstalled, it Verifies the packages match, this might take a long time. It's just pip being pip (if you want the extreme try to do the same with conda, that one is even slower)
the output of that verification stage is no new packages are installed (otherwise good thing we checked 🙂 )
bottom line, if you want to skip the pip verification/installation pass CLEARML_AGENT_SKIP_PYTHON_ENV_INSTALL=1

btw: i'm checking regrading the GH issue