@Trippetoe wrote:
Maybe i'm quibbling here (plus don't fully understand conda environments), but isnt the purpose of a conda environments to remove dependencies on other 'environments'?
I think the error message is a little misleading. But regardless, the version of arcpy in your cloned environment needs to match the version of ArcGIS Pro to ensure binary compatibility, this is a common issue with other python packages that use C/C++ extension libraries.
If your script that uses arcgis API doesn't use arcpy (and doesn't require any arcpy functionality), you can create a stand-alone conda env with arcgis that doesn't include arcpy and thus doesn't depend on a specific version of ArcGS Pro.
E.g. from the command line:
conda create -n arcgisapi -c esri arcgis
https://developers.arcgis.com/python/guide/anaconda