diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..3df7d86b9e29a1aa702c84369d9be3ba5e9586b8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+# Treemmer
+
+
+A tool to to reduce large phylogenetic datasets with minimal loss of diversity.
+
+Here you find the software, the data and scripts used in the manuscript (Influenza_data, MTB_data and stochastic component), and a short tutorial on fine tuning the behaviour of Treemmer with the pruning options.
+
+Check also treemmer-animate a script by Thomas Hackl to visualize the results of Treemmer: https://github.com/thackl/treemmer-animate