I have created an initial version of my UTM Cloning script available here. It makes a bunch of assumptions on usage and setp, and requires templates to be set up in a certain way. The script takes care of a number of things to quickly spin up one or more machines for a project / experiment / itch.
In Action (Ubuntu)
maarten@Maartens-MacBook-Pro UTMultiply % ./utmultiply.sh
Fetching list of Template VMs... [Done]
Select Template:
1. Template - Debian 12.7.0
2. Template - Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
Please enter a number [Default: 1]: 2
You selected: Template - Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
Please enter a new hostname for Template - Ubuntu 22.04 LTS: demo-clone
Hostname is valid: demo-clone
Cloning Template - Ubuntu 22.04 LTS as demo-clone...[Done]
Randomizing MAC address...[Done]
Starting VM...[Done]
Retrieving IP address...[Done]
Setting hostname on the VM...[Done]
Updating SSH config...[Done]
Summary:
VM Name : demo-clone
IP Address : 192.168.64.21
SSH Command : ssh demo-clone
After which you can use SSH to connect, using the entry created in ~/.ssh/config: