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+++ b/docs/index.rst
@@ -3,8 +3,60 @@
 Software Heritage - Deposit
 ===========================
 
-Push-based deposit of software source code artifacts to the archive.
+Push-based deposit of software source code artifacts and metadata to the
+Software Heritage (SWH) Archive.
 
+Description
+-----------
+
+Most of the software source code artifacts present in the SWH Archive are
+gathered by the mean of :term:`loader <loader>` workers run by the SWH project
+from sourve code origins identified by :term:`lister <lister>` workers. This is
+a pull mechanism: it's the responsibility of the SWH project to gather and
+collect source code artifacts that way.
+
+Alternatively, SWH allows its partners to push source code
+artifacts and metadata directly into the Archive with a push-based mechanism.
+By using this possibility different actors, holding software artifacts or
+metadata, can preserve their assets without having to pass through an
+intermediate collaborative development platform, which is already harvested by
+SWH (e.g GitHub, Gitlab, etc.).
+
+This mechanism is the `deposit`.
+
+The main idea is the deposit is an authenticated access to an API allowing the
+user to provide source code artifacts -- with metadata -- to be ingested in the
+SWH Archive. The result of that is a :ref:`SWHID
+<persistent-identifiers>` that can be used to uniquely and persistently
+identify that very piece of source code.
+
+This unique identifier can then be used to `reference the source code
+<https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02446202>`_ (e.g. in a `scientific paper
+<https://www.softwareheritage.org/2020/05/26/citing-software-with-style/>`_)
+and retrieve it using the :ref:`vault <swh-vault>` feature of the SWH Archive
+platform.
+
+The differences between a piece of code uploaded using the deposit rather than
+simply asking SWH to archive a repository using the `save code now
+<https://archive.softwareheritage.org/save/>`_ feature are:
+
+- a deposited artifact is provided from one of the SWH partners which is
+  regarded as a trusted authority,
+- a deposited artifact requires metadata properties describing the source code
+  artifact,
+- a deposited artifact has a codemeta_ metadata entry attached to it,
+- a deposited artifact has the same visibility on the SWH Archive than a
+  collected repository,
+- a deposited artifacts can be searched with its provided url property on the
+  SWH Archive,
+- the deposit API uses the `SWORD v2`_ API, thus requires some tooling to send
+  deposits to SWH. These tools are provided with this repository.
+
+See the :ref:`getting-started` page for more details on how to use the deposit
+client tools to push a deposit in the SWH Archive.
+
+.. _codemeta: https://codemeta.github.io/
+.. _`SWORD v2`: http://swordapp.org/sword-v2/
 
 .. toctree::
    :maxdepth: 2