diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index d4f8016..201ec9e 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -3,18 +3,20 @@
 > Polonius: What do you read, my lord?
 > Hamlet: Words, words, words.
 
-A chatbot that answers in Shakespeare quotes. Live at **<https://hamlet.42labs.io>**.
+[![Project Status: Inactive](https://www.repostatus.org/badges/latest/inactive.svg)](https://www.repostatus.org/#inactive)
+[![License: MIT](https://img.shields.io/badge/license-MIT-blue.svg)](LICENSE)
 
-### How it works
+A chatbot that answers in Shakespeare quotes. Live at **<https://hamlet.42labs.io>**.
 
-Flask + jQuery front end. The server picks an apt quote from `shakespeare.json` with a pre-LLM IR pipeline: [TF–IDF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tf%E2%80%93idf) cosine similarity over a pre-computed corpus index, [Porter stemming](https://tartarus.org/martin/PorterStemmer/), [WordNet](https://wordnet.princeton.edu/) synonym expansion (NLTK), and [TextBlob](https://textblob.readthedocs.io/en/dev/) sentiment as a tiebreaker. Returns `{quote, source}`. Built in 2016, kept online as an artifact of the pre-LLM era.
+> [!NOTE]
+> **Unmaintained, and staying online.** Built in 2016, kept running as an artifact of
+> how this was done before LLMs. Nothing here is being developed; issues and pull
+> requests may sit indefinitely. The site works — that is the whole point of leaving
+> it up.
 
-### UI
+### How it works
 
-- IM-style speech bubbles: user on the right with a person avatar, Hamlet on the left with the Yorick-skull glyph.
-- Header with brand mark + an info button that re-opens the welcome modal.
-- Welcome modal (`Hark!`) shown once per browser via `localStorage`.
-- 42labs footer (`© 2026 42LABS`).
+Flask + jQuery front end. The server picks an apt quote from `shakespeare.json` with a pre-LLM IR pipeline: [TF–IDF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tf%E2%80%93idf) cosine similarity over a pre-computed corpus index, [Porter stemming](https://tartarus.org/martin/PorterStemmer/), [WordNet](https://wordnet.princeton.edu/) synonym expansion (NLTK), and [TextBlob](https://textblob.readthedocs.io/en/dev/) sentiment as a tiebreaker. Returns `{quote, source}`.
 
 ### Run locally
 
@@ -25,6 +27,6 @@ pip install -r requirements.txt
 flask --app app run --port 5001
 ```
 
-### Deploy
+### License
 
-Hosted on Vercel (`@vercel/python` builder, `vercel.json` rewrites all routes to `app.py`). Deploy the current branch with `vercel --prod`.
+[MIT](LICENSE). Do what you like with it.