diff --git a/README b/README
index cf44d6ea05..2457ea1f1f 100644
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -1 +1,19 @@
-This is highly unstable!
+PROJECT STATUS: CAVEAT EMPTOR
+
+This is an unstable preview release. I'm open sourcing some of Facebook's
+internal tools, but they'll be unstable for probably at least a couple months.
+-epriestley
+
+
+WHAT IS PHABRICATOR?
+
+Phabricator is a suite of web applications that facilitate software development
+tasks, particularly code review. The primary application in the suite is
+Differential, a code review tool.
+
+Phabricator is highly unstable and has many missing features! These applications
+are being brought over from Facebook's internal toolset, but there's a lot of
+stuff that hasn't made it over yet. Feel free to follow the project but you
+probably shouldn't try to install this yet unless you're extremely ambitious
+or just want to take a look at it. I'm opening it up now mostly to make it
+easier for me to do test deployments outside of Facebook.