Explore Prefect concepts
Concept |
Description |
Flows |
A Prefect workflow, defined as a Python function. |
Tasks |
Discrete units of work in a Prefect workflow. |
Deployments |
A server-side concept that encapsulates flow metadata, allowing it to be scheduled and triggered via API. |
Work Pools & Workers |
Use Prefect to dynamically provision and configure infrastructure in your execution environment. |
Schedules |
Tell the Prefect API how to create new flow runs for you automatically on a specified cadence. |
Results |
The data returned by a flow or a task. |
Artifacts |
Formatted outputs rendered in the Prefect UI, such as markdown, tables, or links. |
States |
Rich objects that capture the status of a particular task run or flow run. |
Blocks |
Prefect primitives that enable the storage of configuration and provide a UI interface. |
Task Runners |
Configure how tasks are run - concurrently, in parallel, or in a distributed environment. |
Automations |
Configure actions that Prefect executes automatically based on trigger conditions. |
Block and Agent-Based Deployments |
Description |
Block-based Deployments |
Create deployments that rely on blocks. |
Infrastructure |
Blocks that specify infrastructure for flow runs created by a deployment. |
Storage |
Lets you configure how flow code for deployments is persisted and retrieved. |
Agents |
Like untyped workers. |
Many features specific to Prefect Cloud are in their own subheading.