Short answer:

PREFECT_GIT_COMMIT_SHA

isn’t something Prefect sets for you. If it’s empty, it just isn’t defined in the environment where you’re running

prefect deploy

. You’ve got a few ways to fix it (any one of these will work): 1) Set it before you run prefect deploy - Bash:

export PREFECT_GIT_COMMIT_SHA=$(git rev-parse --short HEAD)
  prefect deploy

- PowerShell:

$env:PREFECT_GIT_COMMIT_SHA = (git rev-parse --short HEAD)
  prefect deploy

2) Compute it inside your build steps and reference the step output

build:
  - prefect.deployments.steps.run_shell_script:
      id: get-sha
      script: "git rev-parse --short HEAD"
  - prefect_docker.deployments.steps.build_docker_image:
      id: build-image
      requires: prefect-docker>=0.6.0
      image_name: "{{ prefect.blocks.secret.docker-image }}"
      tag: "reports-analytics-{{ get-sha.stdout }}"
      dockerfile: ../Dockerfile
      platform: "linux/amd64"

3) Use your CI’s built-in commit SHA variable instead - GitHub Actions:

tag: "reports-analytics-{{ $GITHUB_SHA }}"

Or explicitly set your variable:

- name: Deploy
    run: |
      export PREFECT_GIT_COMMIT_SHA=${{ github.sha }}
      prefect deploy

- GitLab CI:

tag: "reports-analytics-{{ $CI_COMMIT_SHA }}"

Notes: - Build steps run in the environment where you execute

prefect deploy

. Make sure that environment has

git

installed and is inside the repo so

git rev-parse

works. - Prefect 3.x will use git metadata for deployment versioning if available, but it does not automatically populate

PREFECT_GIT_COMMIT_SHA

for templating. Docs for reference: - Prefect YAML templating and environment variables: prefect.yaml guide - Run shell script step: run_shell_script step If you can share where you’re running

prefect deploy

(local, GitHub Actions, GitLab, etc.), I can give a tailored snippet.