Great question. Short answer: removing

schedules:

from

prefect.yaml

and running

prefect deploy

will not delete existing schedules. In Prefect 3.x, schedules are only changed if you explicitly send new schedules; otherwise, existing schedules are retained. Ways to get the behavior you want: - If you want the deployment to have exactly the schedules in your

prefect.yaml

- Keep a

schedules:

section in the YAML with the schedules you want. When present,

prefect deploy

will replace existing schedules with the ones in the file. - Docs: Create deployment schedules, prefect.yaml reference - If you want no schedules (i.e., you removed

schedules:

from the file) - You must explicitly clear them, since

prefect deploy

won’t delete schedules when the section is absent. - Useful commands:

# See current schedules
    prefect deployment schedule ls "<flow-name>/<deployment-name>"

    # Clear all schedules
    prefect deployment schedule clear "<flow-name>/<deployment-name>" -y

- CLI reference: Prefect deployment CLI (see the

schedule

subcommands) - If you want to remove one schedule but keep others - List the schedules to get IDs, then delete by ID:

prefect deployment schedule ls "<flow-name>/<deployment-name>"
    prefect deployment schedule delete "<flow-name>/<deployment-name>" <schedule-id>

Tip: If you’re automating deployments, you can add a step that runs

prefect deployment schedule clear "<flow>/<deployment>" -y

when your

prefect.yaml

has no

schedules:

section, so the deployment ends up with zero schedules. Would you like me to help craft a small script/CI step that clears schedules when the YAML has none? If you share your deployment name (

<flow-name>/<deployment-name>

), I can give exact commands.

You’re on the right track. There isn’t a global “prefect schedules clear --all” command, and

prefect deploy

will not clear schedules when the

schedules:

section is absent. The supported way is per-deployment: - Clear schedules:

prefect deployment schedule clear "<flow>/<deployment>" -y

- Then deploy:

prefect deploy --all

If you truly want to clear schedules for every deployment in the workspace before deploying, you can loop over them. For CircleCI, something like this works:

command: |
  uv sync --all-extras
  uv run bash -eo pipefail <<'BASH'
  set -euo pipefail
  # Clear schedules for ALL deployments in the workspace — be careful if you share the workspace!
  mapfile -t deployments < <(prefect deployment ls | awk 'NR>2 {print $1}')
  for d in "${deployments[@]}"; do
    echo "Clearing schedules for $d"
    prefect deployment schedule clear "$d" -y
  done
  BASH

  uv run prefect deploy --all

Safer (recommended) variants: - If your project’s deployments share a naming convention, filter to those:

PROJECT_PREFIX="myproject-"   # adjust to your naming scheme
uv run bash -eo pipefail <<'BASH'
set -euo pipefail
prefect deployment ls | awk 'NR>2 {print $1}' | grep "$PROJECT_PREFIX" | xargs -n1 -I{} prefect deployment schedule clear "{}" -y
BASH
uv run prefect deploy --all

- Or explicitly enumerate known deployment names (most robust if you have a short list):

DEPLOYMENTS=("flow-a/deploy-a" "flow-b/deploy-b")
uv run bash -eo pipefail <<'BASH'
set -euo pipefail
for d in "${DEPLOYMENTS[@]}"; do
  prefect deployment schedule clear "$d" -y
done
BASH
uv run prefect deploy --all

Notes: - Clearing first is fine: deployments that have schedules in your

prefect.yaml

will recreate them on deploy; those without will remain unscheduled (your goal). - There is no

--all

flag for `prefect deployment schedule clear`; it’s per-deployment. - Verify with:

prefect deployment schedule ls "<flow>/<deployment>"

CLI reference for these commands: Prefect deployment CLI (see the

schedule clear

,

schedule ls

,

schedule delete

subcommands). Quick question to tailor the script: do you want to clear schedules for every deployment in the entire workspace, or only for deployments from this repo? If the latter, do your deployment names share a common prefix? I can provide an exact CircleCI snippet based on that.

Short answer: No. Pausing a schedule in the UI and then deploying without a

schedules:

section will not clear it. The schedule still exists (and remains paused) because

prefect deploy

only updates schedules if you explicitly provide new ones. To remove schedules, clear them explicitly:

prefect deployment schedule clear "<flow-name>/<deployment-name>" -y

Then deploy:

prefect deploy --all

If you want deployments to always reflect exactly what’s in

prefect.yaml

, keep a

schedules:

section in the file. When present (and non-empty), Prefect replaces existing schedules with the ones you provide. If you want zero schedules, you must clear them via CLI (an empty

schedules: []

won’t clear). CLI reference: Prefect deployment CLI (see

schedule clear

,

schedule ls

,

schedule delete

).