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Prefect

Turn any Python function into an observable, retriable workflow — minimal boilerplate.

0Open Source
Workflow Orchestration
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Overview

Prefect is a modern workflow orchestration framework that turns Python functions into observable, retriable, and schedulable workflows with minimal boilerplate and a powerful cloud control plane for monitoring and incident response.

Key Features

  • Decorate Python functions with @flow and @task — no DAG rewrite
  • Automatic retries, timeouts, and caching with minimal config
  • Prefect Cloud for managed scheduling, logging, and alerting
  • Work pools and workers for flexible infrastructure deployment
  • Deployments for versioned, parameterized workflow runs
  • Native async support and dynamic task generation

Real-World Workflows

Convert an existing Python ETL script to a workflow

  1. 1Add @flow to the main function and @task to individual steps
  2. 2Run the flow locally — Prefect automatically tracks task states
  3. 3Deploy to Prefect Cloud with a prefect deploy command
  4. 4Set a schedule and configure Slack alerts on flow failure

Parameterized data pipeline with dynamic tasks

  1. 1Define flow parameters (date_range, source_table) using Pydantic models
  2. 2Use prefect.task to fan out over a dynamic list of items
  3. 3Submit runs with different parameters via the Prefect UI or API
  4. 4Track run history and compare outcomes across parameter sets

Getting Started

# Install Prefect
pip install prefect

# Define a flow
from prefect import flow, task

@task
def extract(): return [1, 2, 3]

@flow
def my_pipeline():
    data = extract()
    print(data)

my_pipeline()

# Start local UI
prefect server start

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