diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..ec612801601a967c67280b9ea6c1d2779fa33a2c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
+alived-notify
+=============
+
+no longer used. was written to be called by the alive server when IOC states changed.
+
+an.py
+=====
+
+poll the web page incessantly and notify in one of many ways.
+
+NOTE: poll period in the script must match the poll period in the cron job.
+
+gnome3-notify.py
+================
+
+used by an.py when providing notifications on Gnome3.  Should be able to open a url to the
+alive web page when a user clicks "More Info" on the notification, but can't figure out how
+to make that work.  Without the url-opening-functionality, this could be replaced by the
+notify-send command-line utility.
+