[andix]

I think you can just pick the components you really need via nuget reference. And start/stop the web server as you like.

The full asp.net out-of-the-box experience is tailored to the most common use case, which is a plain web service.

I think you can even run the Kestrel HTTP server without all the asp.net pipelines, infrastructure and without dependency injection.

Also the common WebApplication.CreateBuilder() includes a lot of default configuration (batteries included), there is also CreateSlimBuilder() and CreateEmptyBuilder().