(Note: I haven't worked with Ember, and this probably doesn't jive with how they do things) This sounds a lot like traditional async Model/View programming. I'

(Note: I haven't worked with Ember, and this probably doesn't jive with how they do things) This sounds a lot like traditional async Model/View programming. I've traditionally passed a model around, and use subscriptions to listen for "data." That has the added benefit of being reusable, with the model dispatching change events. Promises in this case sound like they are fulfilling a similar role by your description.