diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 27406fd..835f671 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -2,9 +2,16 @@
 
 The MCP inspector is a developer tool for testing and debugging MCP servers.
 
-Setup:
+## Getting started
 
-```bash
+This repository depends on the [MCP TypeScript SDK](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/typescript-sdk/). Until these repositories are made public and published to npm, the SDK has to be preinstalled manually:
+
+1. Download the [latest release of the SDK](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/typescript-sdk/releases) (the file named something like `modelcontextprotocol-sdk-0.1.0.tgz`). You don't need to extract it.
+2. From within your checkout of _this_ repository, run `npm install --save path/to/sdk.tgz`. This will overwrite the expected location for the SDK to allow you to proceed.
+
+Then, you should be able to install the rest of the dependencies normally:
+
+```sh
 npm install
 ```