The big thing: artifacts only show up in the UI if they’re being created against a Prefect API/backend that the UI is connected to. A few common gotchas for your exact case: 1.

key

only affects where it appears, not whether it gets persisted You’re already passing

key="dbt-build-tests"

, which is correct if you want it on the main Artifacts page. 2. It must run in a Prefect flow/task context Make sure this is being called inside a

@flow

or

@task

, not just in a plain Python script. Example:

python
from prefect import flow
from prefect.artifacts import create_markdown_artifact

@flow
def my_flow():
    create_markdown_artifact(
        key="dbt-build-tests",
        markdown="# dbt test results\n\nAll good"
    )

if __name__ == "__main__":
    my_flow()

3. You need to be connected to Prefect Cloud or a persistent Prefect server If you’re just running locally without a configured API, the artifact may not end up somewhere you can browse in the UI you’re looking at. Check:

bash
prefect config view

Look for

PREFECT_API_URL

. If you’re using Cloud, it should point to Cloud. If you’re using self-hosted server, it should point to that server. 4. Check the right UI location With a

key

, the artifact should appear on the Artifacts page, and also be associated with the run. Without a

key

, it only appears on the run’s Artifacts tab. 5. Reusing the same key updates/version-tracks that artifact If you keep writing to

dbt-build-tests

, you may not see multiple separate artifacts — you may be updating the same keyed artifact lineage. 6. The flow run must actually execute successfully far enough to create it If the run fails before

create_markdown_artifact(...)

is reached, nothing will appear. If you want, I can help you debug this quickly. The most useful next info would be: - are you using Prefect Cloud or self-hosted server? - are you calling this inside a flow/task? - do you see the flow run in the UI, just not the artifact? Docs: - Artifacts concept docs - Artifacts how-to - `prefect.artifacts` API reference