diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
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+++ b/README.md
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 
 # ![Maggma](docs/logo_w_text.svg)
 
-[![Static Badge](https://img.shields.io/badge/documentation-blue?logo=github)](https://materialsproject.github.io/maggma) [![testing](https://github.com/materialsproject/maggma/workflows/testing/badge.svg)](https://github.com/materialsproject/maggma/actions?query=workflow%3Atesting) [![codecov](https://codecov.io/gh/materialsproject/maggma/branch/main/graph/badge.svg)](https://codecov.io/gh/materialsproject/maggma) [![python](https://img.shields.io/badge/Python-3.8+-blue.svg?logo=python&logoColor=white)]()
+[![Static Badge](https://img.shields.io/badge/documentation-blue?logo=github)](https://materialsproject.github.io/maggma) [![testing](https://github.com/materialsproject/maggma/workflows/testing/badge.svg)](https://github.com/materialsproject/maggma/actions?query=workflow%3Atesting) [![codecov](https://codecov.io/gh/materialsproject/maggma/branch/main/graph/badge.svg)](https://codecov.io/gh/materialsproject/maggma) [![python](https://img.shields.io/badge/Python-3.9+-blue.svg?logo=python&logoColor=white)]()
 
 ## What is Maggma
 
diff --git a/docs/index.md b/docs/index.md
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+++ b/docs/index.md
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-# Maggma
+
+# ![Maggma](logo_w_text.svg)
 
 [![Static Badge](https://img.shields.io/badge/documentation-blue?logo=github)](https://materialsproject.github.io/maggma) [![testing](https://github.com/materialsproject/maggma/workflows/testing/badge.svg)](https://github.com/materialsproject/maggma/actions?query=workflow%3Atesting) [![codecov](https://codecov.io/gh/materialsproject/maggma/branch/main/graph/badge.svg)](https://codecov.io/gh/materialsproject/maggma) [![python](https://img.shields.io/badge/Python-3.9+-blue.svg?logo=python&logoColor=white)]()
 
 ## What is Maggma
 
-Maggma is a framework to build data pipelines from files on disk all the way to a REST API in scientific environments. Maggma has been developed by the Materials Project (MP) team at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
+Maggma is a framework to build scientific data processing pipelines from data stored in
+a variety of formats -- databases, Azure Blobs, files on disk, etc., all the way to a
+REST API. The rest of this README contains a brief, high-level overview of what `maggma` can do.
+For more, please refer to [the documentation](https://materialsproject.github.io/maggma).
 
-Maggma is written in [Python](http://docs.python-guide.org/en/latest/) and supports Python 3.9+.
 
-## Installation from PyPI
+## Installation
+
+### From PyPI
 
 Maggma is published on the [Python Package Index](https://pypi.org/project/maggma/).  The preferred tool for installing
 packages from *PyPi* is **pip**.  This tool is provided with all modern
 versions of Python.
 
-Open your terminal and run the following command.
+Open your terminal and run the following command:
 
 ``` shell
 pip install --upgrade maggma
 ```
+### Direct from `git`
+
+If you want to install the latest development version, but do not plan to
+make any changes to it, you can install as follows:
+
+``` shell
+pip install git+https://github.com/materialsproject/maggma
+```
 
-## Installation from source
+### Local Clone
 
 You can install Maggma directly from a clone of the [Git repository](https://github.com/materialsproject/maggma).  This can be done either by cloning the repo and installing from the local clone, or simply installing directly via **git**.
 
-=== "Local Clone"
+``` shell
+git clone https://github.com//materialsproject/maggma
+cd maggma
+python setup.py install
+```
+
+## Basic Concepts
+
+`maggma`'s core classes -- [`Store`](#store) and [`Builder`](#builder) -- provide building blocks for
+modular data pipelines. Data resides in one or more `Store` and is processed by a
+`Builder`. The results of the processing are saved in another `Store`, and so on:
+
+```mermaid
+flowchart LR
+    s1(Store 1) --Builder 1--> s2(Store 2) --Builder 2--> s3(Store 3)
+s2 -- Builder 3-->s4(Store 4)
+```
+
+### Store
+
+A major challenge in building scalable data pipelines is dealing with all the different types of data sources out there. Maggma's `Store` class provides a consistent, unified interface for querying data from arbitrary data sources. It was originally built around MongoDB, so it's interface closely resembles `PyMongo` syntax. However, Maggma makes it possible to use that same syntax to query other types of databases, such as Amazon S3, GridFS, or files on disk, [and many others](https://materialsproject.github.io/maggma/getting_started/stores/#list-of-stores). Stores implement methods to `connect`, `query`, find `distinct` values, `groupby` fields, `update` documents, and `remove` documents.
+
+The example below demonstrates inserting 4 documents (python `dicts`) into a `MongoStore` with `update`, then
+accessing the data using `count`, `query`, and `distinct`.
+
+```python
+>>> turtles = [{"name": "Leonardo", "color": "blue", "tool": "sword"},
+               {"name": "Donatello","color": "purple", "tool": "staff"},
+               {"name": "Michelangelo", "color": "orange", "tool": "nunchuks"},
+               {"name":"Raphael", "color": "red", "tool": "sai"}
+            ]
+>>> store = MongoStore(database="my_db_name",
+                       collection_name="my_collection_name",
+                       username="my_username",
+                       password="my_password",
+                       host="my_hostname",
+                       port=27017,
+                       key="name",
+                    )
+>>> with store:
+        store.update(turtles)
+>>> store.count()
+4
+>>> store.query_one({})
+{'_id': ObjectId('66746d29a78e8431daa3463a'), 'name': 'Leonardo', 'color': 'blue', 'tool': 'sword'}
+>>> store.distinct('color')
+['purple', 'orange', 'blue', 'red']
+```
 
-    ``` shell
-    git clone https://github.com//materialsproject/maggma
-    cd maggma
-    python setup.py install
-    ```
+### Builder
 
-=== "Direct Git"
-    ``` shell
-    pip install git+https://github.com/materialsproject/maggma
-    ```
+Builders represent a data processing step, analogous to an extract-transform-load (ETL) operation in a data
+warehouse model. Much like `Store` provides a consistent interface for accessing data, the `Builder` classes
+provide a consistent interface for transforming it. `Builder` transformation are each broken into 3 phases: `get_items`, `process_item`, and `update_targets`:
+
+1. `get_items`: Retrieve items from the source Store(s) for processing by the next phase
+2. `process_item`: Manipulate the input item and create an output document that is sent to the next phase for storage.
+3. `update_target`: Add the processed item to the target Store(s).
+
+Both `get_items` and `update_targets` can perform IO (input/output) to the data stores. `process_item` is expected to not perform any IO so that it can be parallelized by Maggma. Builders can be chained together into an array and then saved as a JSON file to be run on a production system.
+
+## Origin and Maintainers
+
+Maggma has been developed and is maintained by the [Materials Project](https://materialsproject.org/) team at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the [Materials Project Software Foundation](https://github.com/materialsproject/foundation).
+
+Maggma is written in [Python](http://docs.python-guide.org/en/latest/) and supports Python 3.9+.