What are best practices for writing efficient Airflow DAGs?

Key best practices for production-quality DAGs:

• Keep DAG files lightweight — avoid heavy imports or database calls at parse time; the scheduler parses DAG files continuously.
• Use top-level constants only — don't call APIs or read files at module level; do it inside operators/callables.
• Set catchup=False unless backfilling is intentional.
• Prefer TaskFlow API for clarity and automatic XCom passing.
• Use sensors in reschedule mode for long waits.
• Keep tasks idempotent and atomic.
• Use Pools to protect downstream systems from overload.
• Set email_on_failure and SLAs for alerting.
• Avoid using Variables at top-level — each call hits the DB at parse time.

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