diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index cf84f39..1ce4820 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -7,3 +7,33 @@
 If the necessity arises this should be a generic interface for a bot
 that exposes functions such as `message_handler` that can parse and
 react to messages.
+
+## Building and running the XMPP bot
+
+Requires `make`, `libstrophe` and `libssl` to be installed. See the `makefile` in the root directory of this repository.
+
+```sh
+make
+```
+This will compile an executable `./bin/xmpp-bot` that can be run with the appropriate CLI variables, such as:
+
+```sh
+./bin/xmpp-bot <bot@myserver.io> <test> <report-file.csv> <avatar-png-image.base64>
+```
+
+### Debugging
+
+`make debug` will compile `./bin/debug/xmpp-bot` with `-g` debug flags turned on and optimization turned off.
+
+
+## Running the pyhton report script
+
+The `./python` subdirectory is meant to be used as a python3 virtual environment. Therefore it is necessary to install the required python3 packages prior to the first run:
+
+```sh
+python3 -m venv ./python
+cd ./python
+source ./bin/activate
+python3 -m pip -r requirements.txt
+```
+