The loop Copilot just learned
Microsoft just gave Copilot the ability to act on your files. Copilot Actions, in the Copilot app on Windows, takes a folder and a plain-English instruction and works through it: sorting a Downloads folder, converting files, pulling fields out of a stack of PDFs. You attach a folder, describe the task, and watch it run.
That is a real shift. Copilot is no longer only the thing in the sidebar you paste into. It can open a folder of files and edit them. The catch, for content work, is that your content isn't in a folder. It's locked inside Shopify, WordPress, Notion, HubSpot, where Copilot Actions can't reach it and there's no diff to read before a change goes live.
What Scratch does
Scratch pulls your CMS into a folder on your machine. One JSON file per record. Prose fields (bodies, descriptions, alt text) sit alongside structured fields (IDs, tags, slugs, dates) in the same file. Shopify, WordPress, HubSpot, Notion, the rest.
Now your content is the one thing Copilot Actions is built to handle: a folder of files. Attach the Scratch project folder, describe the change, and Copilot reads, edits, and writes the records back to the files. Scratch shows you every change as a per-record diff, the way you'd review a pull request, and publishes only what you approve back to the CMS. Copilot edits. You keep the merge button.
Copilot Actions on your Scratch folder
Open the Copilot app on Windows and point Copilot Actions at your work.
Attach the folder. Use Attach folder and pick your Scratch project folder. Then describe the pass in plain English: tighten every product description, generate the missing alt text, normalize tags to your taxonomy, cap meta descriptions at 160 characters.
Let it work, and watch. Copilot Actions runs the job in its own agent workspace, a contained space separate from your desktop session. You can check progress, see which records it has touched, and take over at any point. It works through the catalog while you keep an eye on it.
Review in Scratch, not in Copilot. When it finishes, the edits are sitting in your Scratch folder as file changes. Open the Scratch desktop app and every changed record is a row in the review table, old on the left, new on the right, changed words highlighted. Approve the ones that landed. Reject or fix the ones that drifted.
Copilot Actions is new, and like any agent it will get a record wrong now and then. That is exactly what the Scratch review gate is for. Nothing it writes reaches your live store until you have read the diff and said yes.
What stays safe
Files are local. Copilot reads and writes files in your Scratch project folder; it never touches your CMS. Nothing leaves your machine until you click publish in Scratch, per record.
Validators (optional) are AI-authored Python rules that fail length-cap and formatting regressions before a diff ever reaches your eyes. Per-row approve. Per-row rollback. The original version sits next to the dirty one until you decide.
Bring your own Microsoft account. Scratch holds no Copilot credentials and runs no model. You sign into Copilot the way you already do.
What this is not
Not a Microsoft integration. Not a Copilot plugin or a "Copilot for CMS" wrapper that pushes through an API on Copilot's behalf. Scratch is the file substrate; Copilot is the agent you brought. The shape (pull, edit, diff, ship) survives whichever Copilot model you're on this quarter.
Browse the skills below for prompts that work end-to-end with Copilot.