diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index eea82ba72a..1a610413c2 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-**N.B. The project is a work in progress and is not ready for production.**
+# ALPHA: The project is a work in progress and is not ready for production.
 
 # Notary
 
diff --git a/cmd/notary-server/README.md b/cmd/notary-server/README.md
index e23220dcd9..4f4ceff375 100644
--- a/cmd/notary-server/README.md
+++ b/cmd/notary-server/README.md
@@ -1 +1,63 @@
 # Notary Server
+
+Notary Server manages TUF data. It may be configured to use either JWT
+or HTTP Basic Auth for authentication. Currently it only supports MySQL
+for store of the TUF data, we intend to expand this to other storage
+options.
+
+## Setup for Development
+
+The notary repository comes with Dockerfiles and a docker-compose file
+to faciliate development. Simply run the following commands to start
+a notary server with a temporary MySQL database in containers:
+
+```
+$ docker-compose build
+$ docker-compose up
+```
+
+If you are on Mac OSX with boot2docker or kitematic, you'll need to
+update your hosts file such that the name `notary` is associated with
+the IP address of your VM (for boot2docker, this can be determined
+by running `boot2docker ip`, with kitematic, `echo $DOCKER_HOST` should
+show the IP of the VM). If you are using the default Linux setup,
+you need to add `127.0.0.1 notary` to your hosts file.
+
+## Compiling Notary Server
+
+From the root of this git repository, run `make binaries`. This will
+compile the notary and notary-server applications and place them in
+a `bin` directory at the root of the git repository (the `bin` directory
+is ignored by the .gitignore file).
+
+## Running Notary Server
+
+The `notary-server` application has the following usage:
+
+```
+$ bin/notary-server --help
+usage: bin/notary-serve
+  -config="": Path to configuration file
+  -debug=false: Enable the debugging server on localhost:8080
+```
+
+## Configuring Notary Server
+
+The configuration file must be a json file with the following format:
+
+```json
+{
+    "server": {
+        "addr": ":4443",
+        "tls_cert_file": "./fixtures/notary.pem",
+        "tls_key_file": "./fixtures/notary.key"
+    }
+    "logging": {
+        "level": 5
+    }
+}
+```
+
+The pem and key provided in fixtures are purely for local development and
+testing. For production, you must create your own keypair and certificate,
+either via the CA of your choice, or a self signed certificate.
diff --git a/cmd/notary-server/main.go b/cmd/notary-server/main.go
index 72f4a6acda..d8ebb9653e 100644
--- a/cmd/notary-server/main.go
+++ b/cmd/notary-server/main.go
@@ -109,7 +109,7 @@ func main() {
 }
 
 func usage() {
-	fmt.Println("usage:", os.Args[0], "<config>")
+	fmt.Println("usage:", os.Args[0])
 	flag.PrintDefaults()
 }