Scratch orgs are short-term Salesforce environments that you can spin up to work on a feature. They are source-driven and disposable, meaning you can create and delete them as needed. They are fully configurable, allowing you to emulate different Salesforce editions with different features and settings. You can also install packages and deploy synthetic or dummy data for testing. Scratch orgs are ideal for developing in a source-driven way, as they enable source tracking, which keeps your local source files and the metadata in your org in sync. You can use Salesforce CLI or an IDE to create, open, and manage scratch orgs. Scratch orgs are different from other types of Salesforce orgs, such as Developer sandboxes, Full Copy sandboxes, and Developer orgs, which are long-term, persistent, and not source-driven. References:
* Scratch Orgs from the Salesforce DX Developer Guide
* Develop in Scratch Orgs from the Lightning Web Components Developer Guide
* Manage Scratch Orgs from the Dev Hub Org from the Salesforce DX Developer Guide