How to create a git repo without a working directory?

I use git worktree concept to create multiple working directory. One for each feature and/or bug fix. So I will create a git clone of a repository once, and then I start creating worktree as needed.

When I clone a git repository, by default a working directory is checked out - main worktree. Which we dont use and unnecessarily takes up space. So I am looking for a way to create a git repo with a working directory being checked out at the beginning.

I tried git clone --bare <url> ./test-git

which actually created a git repo without a working directory but I was not able to create a git worktree out of it. I use to throw the following error -

bash-4.4 [/user/darshan/test-git] $git worktree add -b test-git-worktree.repo ../test-git-worktree origin/repo
Preparing worktree (new branch 'test-git-worktree.repo')
fatal: Not a valid object name: 'origin/repo'.

What am I doing wrong?

I went inside the .git directory created from git clone bare command and found that there was index file and lfs directory missing. And these two items will be present in the .git directory created from the full git clone.

What do these two item indicate?
On running what git command will I get these items?

Solution

We can create a git repository without a working copy using -

git clone -n <url>

This just creates a directory (with repository name) with .git directory inside it.

Note: Furthermore, I hope using git clone --bare should also provide similar functionality. But have not been able to figure that out yet.