# Warm pools

A warm pool keeps machines booted from a template, so a create that names the pool gets one at once instead of starting one.

```sh
harebox pool new --name ci --size small --min-ready 2
harebox pool list
```

Then create with `--pool POOL_ID`. The machine you get is renamed, labelled and given your create's auto-stop, and the pool starts a replacement. With none ready, the create starts a machine from the pool's template and size as usual. A pool's machines come from its template and labels: a create's own environment variables and files aren't applied to them.

Waiting machines are ordinary sandboxes: billed at the Shared rate and counted toward your plan's running limit. There is no other fee. Deleting a pool deletes the machines still waiting, not those already handed out.