@Chris L. I looked a bit more and it looks like you can pass data between tasks in both sync and async flows but you can't have sync tasks in async flows and vice versa. Here are some working examples: Sync flow:

from prefect import task, flow
from prefect import get_run_logger


@task
def get_name():
    return "Marvin"


@task
def say_hi(user_name: str):
    logger = get_run_logger()
    <http://logger.info|logger.info>("Hello %s!", user_name)


@flow
def hello_world():
    user = get_name()
    say_hi(user)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    hello_world()

Async flow

import asyncio
from prefect import task, flow
from prefect import get_run_logger


@task
async def get_name():
    return "Marvin"


@task
async def say_hi(user_name: str):
    logger = get_run_logger()
    <http://logger.info|logger.info>("Hello %s!", user_name)


@flow
async def async_hello_world():
    user = await get_name()
    await say_hi(user)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    asyncio.run(async_hello_world())

Async flow with a result (returning something at the end)

import asyncio
from prefect import task, flow
from prefect import get_run_logger


@task
async def get_name():
    return "Marvin"


@task
async def say_hi(user_name: str):
    logger = get_run_logger()
    <http://logger.info|logger.info>("Hello %s!", user_name)
    return "Orion is awesome!"


@flow
async def async_hello_world_with_final_result():
    user = await get_name()
    return await say_hi(user)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    asyncio.run(async_hello_world_with_final_result())

Did this answer your question?

Some points that may help understand the usage: 1. If you use

sync

tasks, you can call them the same way as in Prefect 1 and pass data as usual 2. If you use

async

tasks, you need to use

await

before calling that task, other than that you can

return

values normally - this means that you can do

task_1 = await my_task(); task_2 = await my_other_task(task_1)

3. You can even have

synchronous

tasks in

async

flows and vice versa (i.e. you can have async tasks inside sync flows). You just can't

await

your async task because that's invalid Python, but Prefect will make it work 4. You can use normal

synchronous

tasks and when you use the default

ConcurrentTaskRunner

, it will use async under the hood to run them concurrently without you having to explicitly make those tasks async

Regarding:

will I be able to use `asnycio`'s synchronisation primitives (https://docs.python.org/3/library/asyncio-sync.html) with PrefectFutures?

I believe we already use those under the hood, so yes, but @Zanie will know it best (sorry for tagging but we need your async knowledge here 🙂)