diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..f07d8b79a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
+*.o
+*.a
+*.so
+*.lib
+*.dll
+vex
+
+auxprogs/genoffsets
+pub/libvex_guest_offsets.h
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..b8dae0236
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+# VEX mirror
+
+This is a mirror of libVEX (of the Valgrind project: valgrind.org) for use with PyVEX (https://github.com/angr/pyvex).