diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9d8586
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+# signald test infrastructure
+
+*infrastructure and configuration for signald testing*
+
+## Signal Server
+The Signal server is a java app, with dependencies on postgres and redis. `signal-server.Dockerfile` describes
+how to build it, and `docker-compose.yaml` shows how to run it. The test server runs nginx in front of the Signal
+server, which terminates TLS and proxies back to localhost:8080 (the Signal server)