Disable screen mirroring by default.

Is there a way--perhaps in Terminal--to disable screen mirroring as the default behavior when a new display is connected?

With Monterey the default behavior when connecting a new monitor is for the laptop screen to mirror the external display's resolution. This behavior is an absolute disaster in live event/entertainment workflows. If I hook up an external 4K display, the laptop screen instantly mirrors the 4K display by default, thus making the text/dialogs on the laptop screen so small that they're nearly impossible to read or navigate. "So why don't you just use the external 4K monitor instead to change the settings," you might ask. Because live production displays are often only 7-8" (imagine a TV truck or studio control room) meant just for verifying signals before they loop out to LED screen processors or projectors. Folks in my industry frequently don't have the luxury of a 32" 4K monitor to use since we are flying around the world with laptops only, whatever we can fit into backpacks or small Pelican cases. There may also be scenarios where the laptop is hooked directly to an LED wall where only a portion of the virtual computer screen is shown, making it impossible to navigate the desktop.

I have (2) brand new 2021 MacBook Pro 14" laptops with the M1 Pro chip. They shipped with and still have Monterey. With these laptops a new display connection will result in the undesirable mirroring option almost always. The one random time that didn't happen resulted in an even worse condition: the OS mirrored the lowest resolution it could detect in the EDID--640x480!--making the usable space on the displays so tiny (think super zoomed in) that the OS couldn't be navigated and all and I had to shut down and reboot.

Mirroring by default is a disaster and I need to be able to change it so that new display connections instead default to "extended display," or to use the terminology in Monterey, "Stop Mirroring."

How can I do this?

Thank you.

extra information:

I only recently upgraded my personal 2018 MBP from Catalina to Monterey; I skipped past Big Sur so I don't know if the behavior was there. I've used El Cap and Mojave with my live event computers for years longer than Apple would prefer just because those OS versions were stable. Mirroring with those operating systems was a bit more random; sometimes it would mirror while other times the OS would default to extending the desktop--the preferred option. But five years ago 4K workflows were less common so even if mirroring did occur it was easier to switch out of because FHD or QHD resolutions were more easily navigable on the laptop displays.