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name: api-client-settings description: "Use Prefect Python clients, settings, profiles, schemas, and the prefect-client package split safely." disable-model-invocation: true metadata: disco-role: operating license: Apache 2.0

Prefect API Client and Settings

Use this sub-skill when a task needs direct Python access to Prefect orchestration or Cloud APIs, settings/profile diagnosis, schema-model construction, or the lightweight prefect-client package boundary.

Start Here

1. Choose the client style in references/api-reference.md: async with get_client() for async code, with get_client(sync_client=True) for synchronous code.
2. Confirm configuration in references/settings-and-profiles.md: PREFECT_API_URL, PREFECT_API_KEY, active profile, and source precedence.
3. If the environment uses prefect-client instead of the full prefect package, read references/prefect-client-package.md before importing CLI/server modules.
4. For failures, use references/troubleshooting.md and the bundled scripts/inspect_prefect_settings.py helper.

Use For

• get_client, PrefectClient, SyncPrefectClient, and direct REST API method calls.
• Pydantic schema objects under prefect.client.schemas.* for filters, sorts, actions, objects, and responses.
• get_current_settings, temporary_settings, settings accessors, environment variables, .env, prefect.toml, pyproject.toml, and profiles TOML.
• prefect-client package behavior and custom generated deployment SDK usage patterns.

Route Elsewhere

• Server implementation internals, generated schema maintenance, and repo test selection: ../repo-development/SKILL.md.
• CLI command operations, server startup, Cloud login commands, and profile/config command usage: ../cli-server-operations/SKILL.md.
• Flow/task decorators, execution semantics, states, futures, and task runners: ../flow-task-authoring/SKILL.md.
• Deployment creation, work pools, workers, and deployment YAML: ../deployments-workers/SKILL.md.

Safe Validation

• Inspect effective settings without network calls:

python scripts/inspect_prefect_settings.py --schema-summary

• Validate a profiles TOML file before relying on it:

python scripts/inspect_prefect_settings.py --validate-profiles --profiles-path ~/.prefect/profiles.toml

• For client code, prefer tiny hello() or read-only list/filter calls against a known API URL; do not start long-lived services from this sub-skill.