Is there a way to set up Prettier to work without the plugin in VSCode

Question

I want to set up prettier to run in the project without having to install the plugin or having to run prettier smth like this:

"prettier-watch": "onchange \"**/*\" -- prettier --write --ignore-unknown {{changed}}"

in the background. Any ideas?

Additionally- read about an option of setting .vscode/settings.json to

{ "editor.defaultFormatter": "esbenp.prettier-vscode", "editor.formatOnSave": true }

to automatize the setup for newly onboarded developers but this still requires the plugin