Scratch orgs are short-lived, disposable Salesforce environments for isolated development and testing. They are created from a Dev Hub and torn down when you are done, so each piece of work can start from a clean org.
Why use scratch orgs
- Develop and test a change in isolation, away from shared sandboxes.
- Start from a known configuration each time rather than a drifting environment.
- Discard the org when the work is finished instead of maintaining it.
What you need
Scratch orgs are created from a Dev Hub, so a connected Dev Hub is a prerequisite. Managing the Dev Hub is covered in Dev Hub Management, and reusing scratch orgs efficiently is covered in Scratch Org Pooling.