What was going on
Building a Databricks job with `depends_on=['task1']` raises `AttributeError: str object has no attribute as_dict` because the field expects TaskDependency objects, not plain strings. Wrap each dependency: `jobs.Task(name='task2', depends_on=[jobs.TaskDependency(task_key='task1')], ...)`. Another user on the thread confirmed this fixed the same error.
What fixed it
Passing plain strings to `depends_on` broke with `AttributeError: str object has no attribute as_dict`. The correct shape is a list of `jobs.TaskDependency` objects, e.g. `depends_on=[jobs.TaskDependency(task_key='task1')]`. The maintainer's answer on the thread shows the full working snippet, and a second user confirmed it resolved their case. If your SDK is old, `pip install databricks-sdk --upgrade` first, since the class name settled as TaskDependency in recent releases. Source: https://github.com/databricks/databricks-sdk-py/issues/505