diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 75cc838b..effab975 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -1,6 +1,10 @@
-# NilAI
+# nilAI
 
-Copy the `.env.sample` to `.env` to and replace the value of the `HUGGINGFACE_API_TOKEN` with the appropriate value. It is required to download Llama3.2 1B.
+Copy the `.env.sample` to `.env` and replace the value of the `HUGGINGFACE_API_TOKEN` with the appropriate value. The `HUGGINGFACE_API_TOKEN` is used to determine whether a user has permission to access certain models. For example, for Llama models, you usually need to have requested access to the model on its [Hugging Face page](https://huggingface.co/meta-llama/Llama-3.2-1B).
+
+There are two ways to deploy **nilAI**. The recommended way is to use docker-compose as it is the easiest and most straightforward.
+
+## Docker
 
 For development environments:
 ```shell
@@ -12,6 +16,36 @@ For production environments:
 docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d --build
 ```
 
+## Manual Deployment
+
+**nilAI** consists of the following components:
+ - **API Frontend**: Receives user requests and handles them appropriately. For model requests, it forwards them to the appropriate backend model.
+ - **Two Databases**:
+    - **SQLite**: The main registry of users on the platform. This will be changed as we move to more production-ready environments. It tracks which users are allowed on the platform, their API keys, and their usage.
+    - **etcd3**: A distributed key-value database used in Kubernetes. It creates key-value pairs with a lifetime. When a key-value pair's lifetime expires, it is automatically removed. Models register their address information on the etcd3 database with a lifetime and keep this lifetime alive. If a model ever disconnects due to an error, the database removes the entry, and the API Frontend no longer advertises that model.
+ - **Models**: There may be zero or more model deployments. Model deployments contain a basic API that responds in the same format to the `/v1/chat/completions` endpoint. The `Model` class defines how models connect to the database and manage their lifecycle.
+
+To deploy the components, first create the `etcd3` instance. The easiest way is to expose it with Docker:
+
+```shell
+# This command runs in the background. If it fails, you may already be running etcd-server on ports 2379 and 2380.
+docker run -d --name etcd-server -p 2379:2379 -p 2380:2380 -e ALLOW_NONE_AUTHENTICATION=yes bitnami/etcd:latest 
+```
+
+Run the **nilAI** API server:
+```shell
+# Shell 1
+## For development environment (auto reloads on file changes):
+uv run fastapi dev nilai-api/src/nilai_api/__main__.py --port 8080
+## For production environment:
+uv run fastapi run nilai-api/src/nilai_api/__main__.py --port 8080
+```
+
+Run the **nilAI** Llama 3.2 1B model. For different models, adapt the command below:
+```shell
+# Shell 2
+## For development environment (auto reloads on file changes):
+uv run fastapi dev nilai-models/src/nilai_models/models/llama_1b_cpu/__init__.py
+## For production environment:
+uv run fastapi run nilai-models/src/nilai_models/models/llama_1b_cpu/__init__.py
 ```
-uv run gunicorn -c gunicorn.conf.py nilai.__main__:app
-```
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