DXnow: Find Out If Your Salesforce Org Is Ready for Scratch Orgs

October 8, 2026

TL;DR - DXnow lets you find out in your browser whether your Salesforce org is ready for Scratch Orgs. Connect your org, and it prepares the Dev Hub, generates a Salesforce DX project and provisions your first Scratch Org, committing every step to Git. It's free, and there's nothing to install.

Motivation

Salesforce DX has been generally available since 2017. Yet many teams I meet still develop in sandboxes and deploy with change sets or other org-based deployment tools.

For years I've been on a mission to make the move to Salesforce DX, and especially to Scratch Orgs, as easy as possible. So far I've mostly built command line tools. For DXnow I chose the web instead: nothing to install, no signup, and no terminal needed.

The idea and the first prototype were born for our talk From Sandbox Black Box to Transparent Scratch Org – With AI at Wir Sind Ohana 26 in Berlin, together with Harald Mayer (Hutte).

The goal

DXnow can't guarantee that your transition will succeed. But it runs through all the initial steps with your real org, so you quickly get a feeling for whether a move to Salesforce DX is feasible and how much work lies ahead. My hope: once you see it's feasible, or at least close, you'll feel motivated to make the move.

Step 1: Connect your org

DXnow uses the Salesforce CLI's own connected app, so you don't have to install anything in your org. The catch: at the end, Salesforce redirects to localhost:1717. That page won't load, so copy its URL from the popup and paste it into DXnow. Yes, it's a bit weird. But it beats making you install yet another Connected App in your org, and your Security team will thank me. Your credentials stay in a cookie in your browser.

Step 2: Run it

With a few clicks, DXnow:

enables Dev Hub and Org Shape on your org
generates sfdx-project.json, a Scratch Org definition and helper scripts
retrieves your Metadata into your browser's file system, with a built-in IDE for a look around
creates a Scratch Org from your Org Shape
installs packages, deploys your Metadata and assigns permission sets, helping you resolve deployment errors along the way

Every step is committed to a Git repository, so you can trace exactly what was done. Download it and continue wherever you like.

What DXnow is not

DXnow is meant for these initial steps only. It's not a tool for managing Scratch Orgs in your daily work, and it's not finished yet. It also won't:

fix every piece of Metadata that doesn't deploy to a Scratch Org
split your monolith into Unlocked Packages
set up CI pipelines and a release process
get your team comfortable with the new workflow

That's the work I do as a freelance Salesforce DevOps Engineer. See how I approach a DX transition or book a 30-minute call.

Try it now: dx.mrolke.de. Found a bug or have a feature request? Report feedback.