Prefect: Start a Local Agent without Default Storage Labels

[kmoonwright]

Current behavior

Starting a LocalAgent will add storage labels by default, which can be confusing for new users and cluttered for users with many agents. Typically, starting a LocalAgent will produce the following by default:

[2020-09-01 15:34:50,612] INFO - agent | Starting LocalAgent with labels ['my-machine.local', 'azure-flow-storage', 'gcs-flow-storage', 's3-flow-storage', 'github-flow-storage', 'webhook-flow-storage']

Proposed behavior

Starting a Local Agent should automatically exclude the following labels:
'azure-flow-storage', 'gcs-flow-storage', 's3-flow-storage', 'github-flow-storage', 'webhook-flow-storage'

These labels should have some option to turn off by default or be removed by default.

Implemented here: https://github.com/PrefectHQ/prefect/blob/5edb9b39bb53e2cb11d37832f3f3f56bb1a3bc6a/src/prefect/agent/local/agent.py#L97

Example

prefect agent start -t "TOKEN"
Produces:

[2020-09-01 17:56:00,216] INFO - agent | Starting LocalAgent with labels ['my-machine.local', 'azure-flow-storage', 'gcs-flow-storage', 's3-flow-storage', 'github-flow-storage', 'webhook-flow-storage']
[2020-09-01 17:56:00,216] INFO - agent | Agent documentation can be found at https://docs.prefect.io/orchestration/
[2020-09-01 17:56:00,216] INFO - agent | Agent connecting to the Prefect API at https://api.prefect.io
[2020-09-01 17:56:00,532] INFO - agent | Waiting for flow runs...

But can clutter the UI:

Potential Results:
Agent management will be decluttered for users with many Agents.
Quality of life change - specifying execution environments via flow affinity is a bit easier to navigate.

Please let me know if there is a current solution or reasoning I'm not aware of!

[dylanbhughes]

https://prefect-community.slack.com/archives/C014Z8DPDSR/p1600439888019800?thread_ts=1600359958.136900&cid=C014Z8DPDSR

This seems to be a common problem. Should we consider adding some specific message for flows registered with the Local Environment and/or Local agents?

This Flow was registered with the LocalExecutor and has been given the following labels: "dylans-macbook-pro", "github-storage". You'll need an agent with matching labels to connect to Prefect Cloud for it to run
For example

[clanzett]

Or maybe add some information about best practice regarding multiple agents on different hosts working on different runs of the same flow or something like that...

[joshmeek]

Tangentially related to #2888 I think we can start to relax the hard enforcement of default labels

[flavienbwk]

I perfectly agree with @kmoonwright. Prefect shouldn't force me to use labels and these should be disabled by default (such as how GitLab Runners system is working for example).

[raphael-riel]

There is already a flag (Default=True) to put the Hostname Label. hostname_label.
I'm foreseeing something very similar for those storage labels!