diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 92adcec..dea2252 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -12,3 +12,21 @@ cosmopolitan already does a tremendous job at
 polyfilling missing features across platforms,
 but pre-existing software still takes a lot of
 tweaking to before becoming fully functional.
+
+## notes
+
+### Docker
+
+this project uses Dockerfiles to allow for *mostly-reproducible* builds.
+podman is used to substitute docker because docker is commercial and bloated.
+**neither docker nor podman is required for executing the binaries.**
+binaries are isolated and extracted from the resulting containers.
+those binaries can be transferred across platforms, like any other APE.
+
+in the future, it would be nice to use something
+like what Void Linux does for its packages,
+which would entirely sidestep the clunkiness
+of Dockerfiles and working with containers.
+
+this project does *not* strive for reproducible builds in the way
+[that nix does.](https://nixos.org/guides/how-nix-works.html)