Are there any prohibitions/caveats associated with a non-task function in a flow, particularly with respect to how the framework might serialize the function and flow? As an example:

def my_non_task_util_func(some_args):
    return util_results

@task
def task_a(a_args):
    return a_result

@task
def task_b(b_args):
    return b_result

with Flow('test') as f:
    util = my_non_task_util_func(some_args)
    util_2 = my_non_task_util_func(some_other_args)
    a = task_a(util, other_a_args)
    b = task_b(util, util_2, a)

Should I be concerned about how Prefect treats this? For further context, this util func is a factory for a collection of

related prefect.tasks.core.constants.Constant

s. Thus far, it has been easier to return these from a vanilla func rather than a task that returns a collection of tasks.

If I understand correctly, the catch is that as a task, it is run when the flow runs, but as a function, it is run when the Python code for the flow is executed (e.g., at the time you build/register the flow).

got it. that makes sense. ty