Shape
A captured snapshot of an org's edition, features, and limits, used to create scratch orgs that mirror it instead of starting bare.
Definition
Org Shape is a Salesforce feature that captures a sandbox or production org's base configuration, edition, enabled features, license counts, and platform limits, as a reusable snapshot, then lets new scratch orgs be created from that shape instead of a plain Developer Edition-like default. It solves a real problem: a bare scratch org often doesn't match production closely enough to catch feature- or limit-related bugs before they surface later. Shape differs from a scratch org definition file in how configuration is sourced, a definition file is explicit JSON someone wrote, while a shape is captured directly from an existing org's actual settings, so it's more accurate but less version-controlled and harder to diff or review. Teams sometimes combine both: a shape for base fidelity, a definition file layered on top for scratch-org-specific overrides. See our Salesforce DevOps best practices guide for how shape fits into environment strategy.
How it works in Serpent
Serpent's environment management lets teams provision scratch orgs and sandboxes from a shared baseline configuration, so testing environments stay representative of production without every developer capturing and applying shape manually. Org comparison also flags when a scratch org or sandbox has drifted from the shape it was meant to mirror. See org management in Serpent for how environment configuration stays consistent across a team.
Shape, answered
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