diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 194f594..44ff89a 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -5,6 +5,17 @@ polished web UI/PWA, Web Push, per-topic push control, and scoped API tokens
 for LAN publishers. Full design rationale lives in
 [docs/phase1/](docs/phase1/00-README.md).
 
+## Why
+
+Started on Telegram for home notifications, but got tired of being fully
+dependent on a third party and routing everything through Telegram's
+servers. Moved to [ntfy](https://ntfy.sh) next — better, but self-hosting
+it still runs into its default 250-messages/24h rate limit unless you tune
+it, and it's a general-purpose tool built for a much broader audience than
+"one household's homelab." That gap is what led to building Notizarr:
+something purpose-fit for this specific use case, entirely self-hosted,
+with no data ever leaving the LAN except the push notification itself.
+
 Status: **Phases 2–9 complete**, Phase 10 (hardening/test-gap-filling) in
 progress. Auth, topics, notification ingestion (canonical + ntfy-compat +
 webhook), rate limiting, dedup, SSE live updates, retention cleanup, the