Welcome to the First Context Beta — Your Complete Field Guide
Status: DRAFT v4 — all 14 video/blog links wired in. Ready to publish.
🟢 Use this guide as an interactive checklist in the app: beta.firstcontext.app/for-beta-testers — same content, with a "Mark complete" tick on every section. Sign in and your progress follows you across devices.
You're holding the keys to First Context a place where the best signal on the internet gets remembered, on-chain, by the people who spotted it first.
This guide is everything you need to scout, signal, comment, and earn during the beta. Each section has a short video watch in order if you're new, or skip to whatever you need.
If you only have ten minutes, watch 1.1 and 3.1. That's enough to make your first catch.
Beta Tester Invitations
NOTE: if you are interested in the beta testing program for FirstContext and earn Early Adopter Credits for taking part, please express your interest in the comments below and we will add you to the beta testers list. Also a list of current beta testers is shown at the end of this blog. Thanks for all of your input so far!
Table of contents
Start here
Install the tools
Your first scout actions
- 3.1 — Your first catch (a single URL)
- 2 — Signal Scout: using the bookmarklets
- 4 — Catch Content: bulk catch a creator's whole feed
- 5 — Add Signal: what it is and why it earns +50% bonus credits
- 3 — Thoughts on Chain: the URL post
- 6.1 — Thoughts on Chain without a Hive login
Finding and following creators
- 7.1 — Find a creator
- 7.2 — Find a creator from your Signal Inbox
- 7.3 — Your Signal Inbox
- 10 — The creator profile page
How rewards work
Giving us feedback
Start here
1.1 — What is First Context? (quick intro)
If you read one line: First Context is a Hive-powered network where scouts spotlight the content worth remembering, and the spotlight itself becomes a piece of curated, on-chain context that compounds over time.
Watch this first. It's the fastest answer to "what am I doing here?"
▶ First Context — A Quick Intro
1 — The detailed intro
Once the quick version clicks, this is the long-form walk-through: why the existing platforms forget everything, how on-chain context fixes that, and what a Signal Scout actually does day-to-day.
▶ First Context — An Easy, New Way to Add Your Thoughts to Web2 Content using Hive
Install the tools
2.1 — Install the 3 bookmarklets
The bookmarklets are how you scout from the wild. Drag them to your bookmark bar once and you can catch content, register creators, and capture signal from any tab without leaving the page.
This video walks through the install on Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. Five minutes total.
▶ Installing the 3 Bookmarklet tools
Tip: the install page is at
/signal-scoutonce you're signed in.
Your first scout actions
3.1 — Your first catch (a single URL)
The simplest possible scout action: paste a URL, confirm the creator, and post it on-chain. This is the thing the onboarding wizard is trying to drop you straight into.
▶ Make Your First Catch — Signal Scout Catch on a single URL
2 — Signal Scout: using the bookmarklets
Same outcome as 3.1 — but triggered from the page you're already reading. Land on a YouTube video or a tweet you want to remember, click the Thoughts on Chain bookmarklet, confirm, done.
▶ Signal Mining with Bookmarklet Signal Mining Tools
4 — Catch Content: bulk catch a creator's whole feed
When you find a creator who consistently puts out signal, you don't want to scout one item at a time — you want to bulk-catch a chunk of their feed in one go. The Catch Content flow does exactly that.
You don't catch their entire back catalogue in one click — there are sensible per-platform caps so we don't melt anyone's API quotas:
- YouTube — 30 videos per fetch, with a "Load older" button to step further back into the channel
- Twitter / X — 10 tweets per scrape
- Podcasts and RSS feeds — every item the feed exposes (typically 10–50)
- Instagram and TikTok — no auto-fetch yet; catch these one at a time via the Scout bookmarklet
Each batch submission is capped at 50 catches. Come back later and run the flow again to pick up newer content.
This video is the bulk-catch walkthrough.
▶ Catch Content — Bulk-Catch a Creator's Whole Feed
5 — Add Signal: what it is and why it earns +50% bonus credits
A catch tells the network that you noticed something. Signal tells it why.
Signal is a small structured form attached to your catch — five fields that turn a bare URL into curatable, AI-readable context:
- Content type — what kind of thing is this? (original post, news, reaction, clip, remix, repost, parody, or unclear)
- Authenticity — is it the real thing, an edit/clip, AI-synthetic, a re-upload, or unclear?
- Importance — how big a deal is this, on the minor → notable → important → high-signal → urgent scale?
- Best parts — at least one timestamp + a short description of what happens at that moment. You can pin up to 3, so a 90-minute interview can highlight three jump-to moments.
- Why it matters — your sentence-or-two on why this catch deserves attention.
Fill all five and your catch is marked Full Signal — and you earn a +50% bonus on top of the base catch credits.
Why the bonus exists. A URL with no context is cheap — anyone can paste a link. A URL with a structured "why-it-matters", a stance on authenticity, and a timestamp pinning the moment that actually matters is something a downstream reader (or an AI agent) can search, ingest, and trust. That's worth more than the spotting alone. The bonus is the network paying you for the curation work, not just the catch.
Anti-gaming guards (so the bonus rewards real effort, not filler):
- "Why it matters" must be at least 20 characters
- Each timestamped best-part description must be at least 10 characters
- You can't paste the same text across multiple fields — each field has to be distinct
Optional fields (don't gate the bonus, but make your catch even more valuable for the downstream AI layer): a one-line topic hint, a specific claim being made, your stance on it (support / dispute / unclear), and up to 10 tags.
One sentence to remember: explain why it matters and you earn more than the scouts who just paste the link.
This video shows the form in action, what each field is asking, and how the boost works.
▶ Add Signal — Earn +50% Bonus Credits with Full Signal
3 — Thoughts on Chain: the URL post
You don't have to be a Signal Scout to participate. Thoughts on Chain lets anyone post their own opinion on any URL — and that opinion lives on Hive forever. Even if the original platform deletes the content, even if the creator gets banned, your take is still there, attributed to you, earning rewards.
This video shows the URL-post flow end-to-end.
▶ Only 2 clicks and a comment to post your Thoughts on Chain on Web2 Content
6.1 — Thoughts on Chain without a Hive login
You don't even need to be logged into a Hive platform to drop a Thought on Chain directly to the content on that platform. We can post on your behalf if you are not logged into that platform, so you can start earning context-on-chain credits without being logged in to a hive front end!.
This video walks through the no-login flow.
▶ Thoughts on Chain Without a Hive Login
Finding and following creators
7.1 — Find a creator
Two ways to find a creator already in First Context: search by name, or paste any URL of theirs. Either route lands you on their profile page where you can subscribe, browse their catches, add signal, or chime in.
▶ Find a Creator on First Context
7.2 — Find a creator from your Signal Inbox
The Signal Inbox is your home feed — the latest catches across every creator you follow. Tap any item and you land on the creator's profile, ready to comment, add signal, or scout the next thing.
▶ Find a Creator from Your Signal Inbox
7.3 — Your Signal Inbox
A short tour of the Signal Inbox itself: how the feed is sorted, how to filter by creator or platform, how on-chain comments and Thoughts on Chain show up next to catches, and how to spot when a piece of content has fresh signal worth opening.
▶ Your Signal Inbox — A Quick Tour
10 — The creator profile page
Every creator has a public profile page that aggregates their content across every platform — YouTube, X, Substack, Hive, podcasts — into one timeline. This video tours the profile: how to read the activity feed, how to add or fix sources, how to comment on individual items, and how the on-chain attribution works.
▶ How to Use a Creator Profile Page - First Context
How rewards work
6 — EA Credits and Trusted Scout Status
Every action you take on First Context can earn rewards on three rails:
- EA Credits — Early Adopter credits, awarded for catching, signalling, enriching profiles, posting scout reports, and adding new creators. These are the in-platform currency for the beta and will convert into the long-term First Context reward unit when we transition out of beta.
- Hive rewards — anything you post on-chain (catches, comments, Thoughts on Chain) is eligible for normal Hive curation rewards from voters and curators on the network.
- Reputation and Trusted Scout status — as your catches and signals get approved, your trust score goes up. Trusted scouts unlock a higher credit multiplier, faster reviews, and visibility advantages in the platform.
The rewards system is designed to start cautiously for new scouts (so abuse doesn't pay), then open up rapidly as you build a track record. The full breakdown — exact rates, how trust is calculated, what graduates a scout, and how to avoid the anti-gaming guard rails — is in the dedicated blog post:
→ First Context — How EA Credits and Trusted Scout Status Work
Feedback channel
This is a beta. We need your reports.
- In-app: click the feedback widget (lower right on every page) — it threads directly to a dedicated Hive comment thread we monitor daily.
- Hive comments: drop them on this post. We read every one.
- Bugs: if something breaks, the feedback widget is the fastest path. Include what you were doing and what went wrong.
We're shipping fixes daily during the beta. You'll see things change. That's the point.
🟢 Reminder — track your progress in-app: beta.firstcontext.app/for-beta-testers has every section above as a checklist. Tick them off as you go.
Welcome aboard. Now let's go catch something good.
Current Beta Testers
Thanks to the below newly minted Signal Scouts / Signal Miners for the Beta Tester phase for taking part in the beta up to now, your feedback has been invaluable at helping us spot the silly bugs we have so far and suggesting some great improvements which we have added to the plan or done our best to implement already. We lookforwards to your ongoing feedback on teh above tasks and hope you are able to complete them without much help from us ;))
