Joining a beta
What you are agreeing to, what is worth reporting, and where each product currently stands.
What a beta means here
The software is unfinished. Not unfinished in the marketing sense where a polished product is called a beta to lower expectations — unfinished in the sense that features get reworked between builds and some screens are visibly incomplete.
Things will break. Occasionally something you were relying on will change shape without warning, because the shape turned out to be wrong.
In exchange, your feedback changes the product. At this stage the workflows themselves are still being tested, so a report that something felt wrong to use carries as much weight as a crash log. Later on that stops being true, which is the real reason to join early rather than late.
What is genuinely useful to report
The most valuable reports tend not to be about crashes. They are about the moment you hesitated.
The point where you got confused
Where you stopped and had to work out what the app meant. Confusion is a design bug and it is almost never reported, because people assume it was their fault.
Anything that felt like a chore
A step you resented doing twice. If a workflow annoys you in week one, it will be the reason you stop using it in week six.
Where a number looked wrong
Even if you cannot say why. A figure that does not match your sense of your own day is worth flagging, because provenance and calculation bugs hide exactly there.
What you expected the app to do and it did not
Unmet expectations are more useful than feature requests. They say what the product implied it would do, which is a promise it made by accident.
Crashes and lost work
Always, immediately, with whatever detail you have. Losing someone's work is the one category of bug that gets dropped in front of everything else.
What is already known
Worth a glance before writing, so you are not reporting something already on the list.
{{TODO: Is there a current known-issues list per product that should be published here? If so it needs a home that is easy to keep current, or it will rot. — CONTENT-TODO #37}}
How to join
Status differs per product.
Writam
In development{{TODO: Is there a public Writam TestFlight, and may the link be published here? — CONTENT-TODO #3}}
Explore WritamSwaya
Private betaIn the hands of a small group of testers. {{TODO: Is the beta open, waitlisted, or closed, and how does someone get in? — CONTENT-TODO #5}}
Explore SwayaBokta
Private betaIn private beta. {{TODO: How does someone join — open, waitlisted, or closed, and what is the step? — CONTENT-TODO #6}}
Explore BoktaWhat beta testers get
{{TODO: What do beta testers actually get — early access and nothing else, a say in what gets prioritised, something later? Promising nothing is a fine answer. Promising vaguely is not. — CONTENT-TODO #7}}