@Marvin in prefect 3, when I run a flow locally I see

prefect - Starting server on <http://127.0.0.1:8560>

in the logs. I did not see this in prefect v1. Does running a flow now require a backend in some fashion?

In Prefect 3, you'll notice that a local server is started when running a flow. This behavior is part of how Prefect 3 operates. Unlike Prefect 1, which did not require running a local server for workflows, Prefect 3 initiates a server locally for managing flow runs. The local server acts as the API backend for orchestration, which is necessary for better performance and more features even when executing flows locally. This allows Prefect to provide consistent behavior between local and cloud execution. For more insights on running flows and the Prefect architecture in version 3, you can check out the Prefect documentation on running flows in local processes: https://docs-3.prefect.io/3.0/deploy/run-flows-in-local-processes.

so this is a little misleading there always has been a backend, we just slightly changed how the ephemeral server works / gets spun up before, we had an in-process asgi app, but there was some complex overhead associated with that, so now we spin up and down another process for the server and thats the log you're seeing so functionally, not a lot has changed