Great question. Short answer: there isn’t a per-automation “why didn’t this trigger?” audit log in the UI today. The way to debug is to look at the event stream and your automation’s config, and (if self-hosted) the server logs that show trigger evaluations. Here’s a quick workflow: 1) Verify the automation is enabled and the config is what you expect

prefect automation inspect "<automation-name>" --yaml
# or
prefect automation inspect --id <automation-id> --json

2) Watch the event stream to see what’s actually happening - This is the primary way to tell whether the events your trigger expects are occurring, with the right resource IDs/tags, and within the time window.

prefect events stream --format text
# or JSON and save to a file
prefect events stream --format json --output-file events.log
# In Prefect Cloud, include account-wide audit logs:
prefect events stream --account

What to look for: - Do the event names match your trigger’s

expect

? - Do the resource labels/ids/tags match your

match

/

match_related

filters? - Are they arriving within the

within

window and meeting the

threshold

? Also look for automation-specific events: -

prefect.automation.triggered

-

prefect.automation.resolved

-

prefect.automation.action.triggered

/

.executed

/

.failed

3) Check in the UI - Automations page: confirm it’s enabled and review the trigger config. - Events feed: watch for the events you expect to drive the automation. - Flow run detail pages: view the events attached to a specific run to confirm what actually fired. 4) If you’re self‑hosting, enable debug logs to see evaluation decisions - The server’s trigger evaluator logs why a trigger is or isn’t ready (thresholds, time windows, for_each buckets). - Set:

PREFECT_LOGGING_LEVEL=DEBUG

Then watch your server logs; you’ll see messages indicating whether an automation met its threshold, still has time remaining in the window, or was not ready to fire. Common gotchas to check: - The automation is paused/disabled. - Event names don’t match

expect

(e.g., expecting Completed vs Succeeded). -

match

/

match_related

filters don’t align with actual `resource.id`/tags on the events. -

within

window too short or

threshold

too high. -

for_each

bucketing on a label that isn’t present on your events, so the trigger is evaluating per empty key. If you can share the automation definition (YAML/JSON) and the event you expected to trigger it, I’m happy to help pinpoint the mismatch.

Yes—while there isn’t a built-in “watch” command for a single automation, you can watch just that automation’s events by filtering the event stream. There’s no

prefect automation watch

command, so use

prefect events stream

and filter by the automation’s resource id (

prefect.automation.<automation-id>

) or name. Quick steps: 1) Get the automation id

prefect automation inspect "<automation-name>" --json | jq -r .id

2) Watch all events for that automation (triggered/resolved/actions)

AUTOMATION_ID=<paste-id>
prefect events stream --format json | jq --arg id "prefect.automation.$AUTOMATION_ID" 'select(.resource.id == $id)'

3) Only watch when it triggers/resolves

AUTOMATION_ID=<paste-id>
prefect events stream --format json | jq --arg id "prefect.automation.$AUTOMATION_ID" 'select(.resource.id == $id and (.event=="prefect.automation.triggered" or .event=="prefect.automation.resolved"))'

4) Only watch action lifecycle for that automation

AUTOMATION_ID=<paste-id>
prefect events stream --format json | jq --arg id "prefect.automation.$AUTOMATION_ID" 'select(.resource.id == $id and (.event=="prefect.automation.action.triggered" or .event=="prefect.automation.action.executed" or .event=="prefect.automation.action.failed"))'

Alternatively, filter by name:

prefect events stream --format json | jq --arg name "My Automation" 'select(.resource.name == $name)'

Programmatic watch (Python)

import anyio
from prefect.events.clients import get_events_subscriber
from prefect.events.filters import EventFilter, EventResourceFilter, EventNameFilter

automation_id = "<your-automation-id>"

filt = EventFilter(
    resource=EventResourceFilter(id=[f"prefect.automation.{automation_id}"]),
    event=EventNameFilter(name=[
        "prefect.automation.triggered",
        "prefect.automation.resolved",
        "prefect.automation.action.triggered",
        "prefect.automation.action.executed",
        "prefect.automation.action.failed",
    ])
)

async def main():
    async with get_events_subscriber(filter=filt) as sub:
        async for ev in sub:
            print(ev.event, ev.occurred, ev.resource.name)

anyio.run(main)

If you share the automation name, I can give you a copy/paste command that targets it directly.