How to isolate Prefect background task workers by environment (dev/staging/prod) using the serve() method

[mclean-connor]

I'm running into an issue with task workers picking up tasks across different environments. Here's an example setup:
Task definition:

pythonfrom prefect import task

@task
def example_task():
    print("Hello World")

Serving the task:

pythonfrom prefect.task_worker import serve

def main():
    serve(example_task)
    
if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

The problem:
I have separate environments (dev, staging, prod), and when I serve the task worker in one environment (e.g., staging), it sometimes picks up tasks submitted from other environments (e.g., dev). The worker subscribes to example_task globally, without any differentiation (at least configuration that I could find).

What I've tried:
I attempted to dynamically set the task name to differentiate by environment, but that doesn't seem to work as expected.

Question:
Is there a recommended way to differentiate tasks of same function and ensure task workers only process specific versions of the task when using prefect.task_worker.serve()?

Any guidance would be appreciated!

[zzstoatzz]

when you say "different environments", what do you actually mean?

if you're using cloud that could mean separate workspaces, or if you're in open source, separate servers. you could also be tagging deployments with dev stg prd etc and that's how you separate environments

if your environments correspond to profiles as we recommend, then you can do PREFECT_PROFILE=stg uv run my_task_worker_serve.py