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@@ -1,5 +1,24 @@
 ### Experimental
 
+## What is this?
+
+I am experimenting with the idea of a distributed shell history. The goal is to
+be able to search your shell history across different bash processes easily.
+And potentially different computers.
+
+This uses UNIX Domain Sockets to communicate with a server written in Racket.
+Each Racket thread corresponds to a shell process, and they receive shell
+commands as messages. If you want to get the history for a given process, you
+simply send a message to a thread and then it sends you back the history.
+
+Unix Domain Sockets are ideal for this, as they are less likely to conflict
+with other services running on the machine (you specify a path, not a port). As
+well, they are more robust than FIFOs because they can handle multiple
+concurrent connections easily.
+
+At some point in the future, part of this may be rewritten in C, Pony, or
+Erlang, or a combination of all three.
+
 1. Compile `server.rkt` with `raco exe server.rkt`
 2. Run `./server`
 3. Run `source shelltalk.sh`