diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..64d23afc14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.md
@@ -0,0 +1,103 @@
+# Contributing to xsf
+
+Install [Pixi](https://pixi.sh/latest/#installation) first. Pixi provisions the compiler toolchain and other dependencies defined in `pixi.toml`.
+
+> [!NOTE]
+> The documented commands below have only been tested on macOS and Linux.
+
+## Clone the repository
+
+Fork the repository, then set `origin` to your fork and add `upstream`:
+
+```bash
+git clone https://github.com/your-github-id/xsf.git
+cd xsf
+git remote add upstream https://github.com/scipy/xsf.git
+```
+
+Check remotes with:
+
+```bash
+git remote -v
+```
+
+You should see:
+
+```bash
+origin  https://github.com/your-github-id/xsf.git (fetch)
+origin  https://github.com/your-github-id/xsf.git (push)
+upstream    https://github.com/scipy/xsf.git (fetch)
+upstream    https://github.com/scipy/xsf.git (push)
+```
+
+To sync your branch with upstream `main`:
+
+```bash
+git fetch upstream
+git checkout main
+git merge upstream/main
+```
+
+## Run tests
+
+Run the default C++ test workflow:
+
+```shell
+pixi run tests
+```
+
+For incremental local work, you can run the steps separately:
+
+```shell
+pixi run clone-xsref
+pixi run configure-tests
+pixi run build-only -j8
+pixi run --skip-deps tests -j2
+```
+
+Useful variants:
+
+- Rebuild after changing code: `pixi run build-tests`
+- Debug test build with extra assertions: `pixi run tests-debug`
+
+## Formatting
+
+Check formatting without modifying files:
+
+```shell
+pixi run format-dry-error
+```
+
+Apply formatting:
+
+```shell
+pixi run format
+```
+
+## Coverage
+
+Coverage support is wired through the `tests-ci` environment and CMake coverage
+targets.
+
+Generate a local HTML coverage report with:
+
+```shell
+pixi run --environment=tests-ci clone-xsref
+pixi run --environment=tests-ci configure-coverage
+pixi run --skip-deps --environment=tests-ci build-tests-ci
+pixi run --skip-deps --environment=tests-ci tests-ci
+pixi run --skip-deps --environment=tests-ci coverage
+```
+
+The generated report is written to `build/coverage_report/index.html`.
+
+For subsequent runs in the same build tree, it is usually enough to rerun:
+
+```shell
+pixi run --skip-deps --environment=tests-ci tests-ci
+pixi run --skip-deps --environment=tests-ci coverage
+```
+
+## Pull requests
+
+Run the relevant tests and formatting checks before opening a pull request.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 66eba43106..8b5caa31b0 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -1,30 +1,9 @@
 # xsf
-Special function implementations.
 
-See https://github.com/scipy/xsf/issues/1 for context.
+Header-only special function implementations extracted from [SciPy](https://github.com/scipy/scipy).
 
-## Tests
+See [scipy/xsf#1](https://github.com/scipy/xsf/issues/1) for project background.
 
-To run the tests:
-- [clone this repository](https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/creating-and-managing-repositories/cloning-a-repository)
-- `cd xsf`
-- [install Pixi](https://pixi.sh/latest/#installation)
-- `pixi run tests`
+## Contributing
 
-You can trigger a rebuild inbetween test runs with:
-
-```shell
-pixi run build-tests
-```
-
-For subsequent test runs, to skip re-cloning [`xsref`](https://github.com/scipy/xsref) or to control parallelism for individual commands, you can use:
-
-```shell
-pixi run clone-xsref
-pixi run configure-tests
-pixi run build-only -j8
-pixi run --skip-deps tests -j2
-```
-
-> [!NOTE]  
-> This has currently only been tested on Linux.
+See [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md) for setup, remotes, testing, formatting, and coverage.