How to turn a shell command into a workflow - Prefect

Run a shell command as a workflow

To run a shell command as a Prefect flow, use the prefect shell watch command.

bash

prefect shell watch "curl http://wttr.in/Chicago?format=3"

Running this command will execute the provided shell command and track execution as a flow run. The output of the shell command is also captured and displayed in the Prefect UI.

Run a shell command on a schedule

To run a shell command on a schedule, use the prefect shell serve command.

bash

prefect shell serve "curl http://wttr.in/Chicago?format=3" \
    --flow-name "Chicago Weather Report" \
    --cron-schedule "0 9 * * *" \
    --deployment-name "Daily"

This will start a process that will execute the provided shell command at the specified cron schedule and track execution as a flow run.

You can trigger a run manually via the Prefect UI or by running:

bash

prefect deployment run "Chicago Weather Report/Daily"

To stop the process and pause the scheduled runs, hit ctrl + c in your terminal.