What is a Deferrable Operator (async operator) in Airflow?

Deferrable Operators (introduced in Airflow 2.2) allow tasks to suspend themselves, release the worker slot, and wait for an external event via a lightweight Trigger component. This is more efficient than sensors in poke mode because no worker thread is held while waiting.

The flow is:

1. Task starts, then defers itself by calling self.defer(...).
2. A Triggerer process monitors the event (file arrival, HTTP response, etc.).
3. When the event fires, the Triggerer resumes the task on a worker.

Use deferrable operators for long-polling scenarios (e.g., waiting hours for a cloud job to finish) to avoid tying up workers.

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