diff --git a/annotations/README.md b/annotations/README.md
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+## Annotations
+
+This package provides an HTTP API for interacting with both annotations and
+streams independently. The HTTP handlers are located in the `transport` folder.
+The code for interacting with the sqlite datastore is located in the
+`service.go` file. Definitions for the basic types & interfaces associated with
+annotations and streams used throughout the platform are located in the
+top-level `influxdb` package, in the `annotation.go` file.
+
+### Anatomy
+
+An annotation is, at its simplest, a textual note on a range of time. The start
+and stop time of that range can be the same point in time, which represents an
+annotation at a single instance. Annotations can also have "stickers".
+"Stickers" allow users to "tag" the annotation with further granularity for
+filtering in key-value pairs. Some examples of sticker key-value pairs are:
+`"product: oss"`, `"product: cloud"`, or `"service: tasks"`, but keys and values
+can be any string.
+
+Every annotation belongs to a single "stream". A "stream" represents a logical
+grouping of annotated events. Some examples of stream names are: `"incidents"`,
+`"deployments"`, or `"marketing"`, but can be any string. A stream can also have
+a description to further clarify what annotated events may be expected in the
+stream.
+
+### Use
+
+Requested annotations may be filtered by stream name, stickers, and/or time
+range. Streams may also be retrieved, in order to view their description. If a
+stream is deleted, all annotations associated with that stream are deleted as
+well. Every annotation that is created must have a stream associated with it -
+if a stream name is not provided when creating an annotation, it will be
+assigned to the default stream.
diff --git a/notebooks/README.md b/notebooks/README.md
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+## Notebooks
+
+This package provides an HTTP API for interacting with InfluxDB notebooks. The
+HTTP handlers are located in the `transport` folder. The code for interacting
+with the sqlite datastore is located in the `service.go` file. Definitions for
+the basic types & interfaces associated with notebooks used throughout the
+platform are located in the top-level `influxdb` package, in the `notebook.go`
+file.
+
+### Anatomy
+
+The backend representation of a notebook is very simple: An object with an ID,
+Name, associated organization ID, created/modified times, and a "spec". The
+"spec" is a mechanism for storing a JSON string defined entirely by the frontend
+UI. The notebook spec will likely be further defined in the future as the
+notebooks feature is developed and more sophisticated backend behaviors are
+required.
+
+### Use
+
+Basic CRUD actions are available for interacting with notebooks through the API.
+Notebooks are persisted in the relational sqlite database, although they
+currently do not make use of any relational features. Again, it is likely that
+the more advanced features of the datastore will be utilized in the future as
+the notebooks feature evolves.
diff --git a/sqlite/README.md b/sqlite/README.md
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+## SQlite
+
+### Purpose
+
+This `sqlite` package provides a basic interface for interacting with the
+embedded sqlite database used by various InfluxDB services which require storing
+relational data.
+
+The actual sqlite driver is provided by
+[`mattn/go-sqlite3`](https://github.com/mattn/go-sqlite3).
+
+### Usage
+
+A single instance of `SqlStore` should be created using the `NewSqlStore`
+function. Currently, this is done in the top-level `launcher` package, and a
+pointer to the `SqlStore` instance is passed to services which require it as
+part of their initialization.
+
+The [`jmoiron/sqlx`](https://github.com/jmoiron/sqlx) package provides a
+convenient and lightweight means to write and read structs into and out of the
+database and is sufficient for performing simple, static queries. For more
+complicated & dynamically constructed queries, the
+[`Masterminds/squirrel`](https://github.com/Masterminds/squirrel) package can be
+used as a query builder.
+
+### Concurrent Access
+
+An interesting aspect of using the file-based sqlite database is that while it
+can support multiple concurrent read requests, only a single write request can
+be processed at a time. A traditional RDBMS would manage concurrent write
+requests on the database server, but for this sqlite implementation write
+requests need to be managed in the application code.
+
+In practice, this means that code intended to mutate the database needs to
+obtain a write lock prior to making queries that would result in a change to the
+data. If locks are not obtained in the application code, it is possible that
+errors will be encountered if concurrent write requests hit the database file at
+the same time.
+
+### Migrations
+
+A simple migration system is implemented in `migrator.go`. When starting the
+influx daemon, the migrator runs migrations defined in `.sql` files using
+sqlite-compatible sql scripts. These migration scripts include a statement to
+set the `user_version` pragma in the database, and only scripts with a higher
+`user_version` than the currently stored pragma are executed.
+
+When creating new migrations, follow the file naming convention established by
+existing migration scripts, which should look like `00XX_script_name.sql`, where
+`XX` is the version number. New scripts should have the version number
+incremented by 1.
+
+### In-Memory Database
+
+When running `influxd` with the `--store=memory` flag, the database will be
+opened using the `:memory:` path, and the maximum number of open database
+connections is set to 1. Because of the way in-memory databases work with
+sqlite, each connection would see a completely new database, so using only a
+single connection will ensure that requests to `influxd` will return a
+consistent set of data.
+
+### Backup & Restore
+
+Methods for backing up and restoring the sqlite database are available on the
+`SqlStore` struct. These operations make use of the [sqlite backup
+API](https://www.sqlite.org/backup.html) made available by the `go-sqlite3`
+driver. It is possible to restore and backup into sqlite databases either stored
+in memory or on disk.
+
+### Sqlite Features / Extensions
+
+There are many additional features and extensions available, see [the go-sqlite3
+package docs](https://github.com/mattn/go-sqlite3#feature--extension-list) for
+the full list.
+
+We currently use the `sqlite_foreign_keys` and `sqlite_json` extensions for
+foreign key support & JSON query support. These features are enabled using
+build tags defined in the `Makefile` and `.goreleaser` config for use in
+local builds & CI builds respectively.