Disable Auto Work Pool Creation

[lordsoffallen]

Bug summary

Worker creates pool automatically if it's not there. This is not ideal if i want to use terraform or my own script to manage the work pool. I had the case where i needed to stop prefect worker as it kept creating the work pool even when i deleted it.

I am using ecs-pool and there should be a way to disable worker from creating ecs-pool.

Version info

Version:              3.6.17.dev5
API version:          0.8.4
Python version:       3.13.0
Git commit:           f5665d45
Built:                Wed, Feb 11, 2026 08:21 AM
OS/Arch:              darwin/arm64
Profile:              local
Server type:          server
Pydantic version:     2.12.5
Server:
  Database:           sqlite
  SQLite version:     3.46.0
Integrations:
  prefect-aws:        0.7.4
  prefect-redis:      0.2.8

Additional context

No response

[desertaxle]

Thanks for opening an issue @lordsoffallen!

This should be pretty straightforward to implement since BaseWorker.__init__ already has a create_pool_if_not_found kwarg. I think it makes sense to add a --no-create-pool-if-not-found flag to the prefect worker start command.

I'm marking this as a good first issue, so if you want to contribute, feel free to open a PR!