diff --git a/LICENSE b/LICENSE
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15622c4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE
@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+MIT License
+
+Copyright (c) 2024 CircuitForge LLC
+
+Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
+of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
+in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
+to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
+copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
+furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
+
+The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
+copies or substantial portions of the Software.
+
+THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
+IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
+FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
+AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
+LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
+OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
+SOFTWARE.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index cc4595f..940ca38 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -4,6 +4,42 @@ CircuitForge voice annotation pipeline. Produces `VoiceFrame` objects from a liv
 
 **Status:** Notation v0.1.x — real inference pipeline live (faster-whisper STT, wav2vec2 SER, librosa prosody, pyannote diarization). Mock mode available for dev/CI without GPU or mic.
 
+---
+
+## Prerequisites
+
+### Start here: mock mode (no GPU, no HuggingFace account)
+
+If you are integrating against the cf-voice API or running CI, start with mock mode. No hardware, no model download, no accounts required:
+
+```bash
+pip install -e ../cf-voice
+CF_VOICE_MOCK=1 python -m cf_voice.app --port 8007
+```
+
+Mock mode emits synthetic `VoiceFrame` objects on a timer. All API surface is identical to real inference.
+
+### Moving to real inference: HuggingFace gated models
+
+Speaker diarization uses two gated HuggingFace models. Before your `HF_TOKEN` will authorise a download, you must individually accept the licence terms for each:
+
+1. [pyannote/speaker-diarization-3.1](https://huggingface.co/pyannote/speaker-diarization-3.1) — click "Agree and access repository"
+2. [pyannote/segmentation-3.0](https://huggingface.co/pyannote/segmentation-3.0) — click "Agree and access repository"
+
+This is a one-time step per HuggingFace account. If you skip it, the service will fail at startup with a `401 Unauthorized` error from HuggingFace.
+
+> **Licence note:** The pyannote models are CC BY 4.0. Attribution is required in any distributed product. Set `HF_TOKEN` to a token belonging to an account that has accepted the above terms — using a shared or third-party token that has not individually accepted the terms violates the licence.
+
+### Hardware
+
+| Component | Minimum |
+|---|---|
+| GPU | Any CUDA-capable GPU |
+| VRAM | 4GB+ recommended |
+| Microphone | Required for live capture (not needed for file processing or mock mode) |
+
+---
+
 ## Install
 
 ```bash