Your first goal

This guide ends with a working goal that collects material and produces results before anything leaves SemanticHub.

#Before you begin

• Verify your email address. You can sign in before verification, but the manual form will not save a goal.
• Prepare a plain-language description of what is relevant and what should be rejected, and pick several public sources that publish about the topic regularly.

#Two ways to create a goal

New goal takes you to /app/goals/new, which offers two setup modes:

• AI-assisted — a conversation with an assistant. This is the default for an account with no goals yet: the application sends you straight to /app/goals/new/assisted.
• Manual — a single form with three sections (Identity, Sources, Filter). Your choice is remembered, so from the second goal onwards it decides where you land.

#AI-assisted setup

It starts with one question: What do you want to watch? You answer in your own words, or take one of the offered examples. That answer creates a draft goal and starts the interview.

The interview has seven acts, shown on the rail on the left:

1. Opening — what this goal is about.
2. Sources — where the articles come from.
3. Filter — what counts as on-topic.
4. Thresholds — when a set of articles becomes a cluster.
5. Workflow — what happens to a finished cluster.
6. Action — where the result is delivered.
7. Wrap-up — what happens next.

The conversation is stored on the server and the page URL carries the goal and session identifiers. Refreshing the tab, closing the browser, or coming back an hour later loses nothing — you return to the same conversation with the same answers.

In act 5 the assistant offers Test delivery. The outcome "Arrived in the test preview" is correct: a new goal is in Test mode, so the payload goes to the internal test bin rather than to a real recipient.

#Switching to the manual form

The conversation header has Switch to manual mode. Nothing is lost: the form picks up the same draft goal, with the name, sources, filter description, and thresholds agreed so far. Finish the setup there and save it with Save and start. The same route is offered when the assistant stops responding or the conversation runs out of its budget.

If you prefer the form from the start, use I'd rather fill in the form on the first screen.

#The manual form

Three sections in one scroll:

Create goal finishes the setup. Delivery is configured separately, in the Action step.

#A new goal starts in Test mode

Whichever route you take, a new goal has Delivery mode set to Test. No step of the interview changes that, and neither does starting the goal from the conversation. In Test mode results are produced normally, but deliveries land in an internal test bin instead of a real recipient. The Test / Production switch lives in the goal's Action step, and you flip it yourself once the results look right.

#After saving