Document what this repo is for and how releases work

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

README.md

@@ -1,3 +1,22 @@
-# Releases
+# AlpineConsent — Releases
 
-Public downloads — AlpineConsent plugin & widget releases (free tier).
+Public downloads for [AlpineConsent](https://alpineconsent.com)'s free-tier plugin and widget builds — the WordPress plugin `.zip` and the standalone widget bundle, one release per version.
+
+**This repo is downloads only.** Source code, issues, and pull requests live in the main [AlpineConsent/AlpineConsent](https://git.alpineconsent.site/AlpineConsent/AlpineConsent) repository — nothing here is meant to be edited directly; every file on the [Releases page](../../releases) is built and published from a tagged commit there.
+
+## What's here
+
+Each [release](../../releases) includes:
+
+* `alpineconsent-wordpress-plugin-vX.Y.Z.zip` — the WordPress plugin, ready to upload via **Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin**, or extract into `/wp-content/plugins/`.
+* `alpineconsent-widget-vX.Y.Z.js` — the standalone widget script, for any non-WordPress site (see the main repo's `docs/INSTALLATION.md` for the Universal Script Tag integration instead, if you don't need a self-hosted copy).
+
+Alpha and beta builds are marked as **pre-releases** on the Releases page — Gitea's own UI keeps those visually separate from stable releases, so "Latest release" always points at something stable.
+
+## License
+
+GPLv2, or (at your option) any later version — see [LICENSE](LICENSE). The same license [WordPress](https://wordpress.org/about/license/) itself uses, chosen deliberately to keep future WordPress.org plugin-directory distribution straightforward.
+
+## Verifying a download
+
+Every release asset's SHA-256 checksum is listed in that release's own notes — worth checking against a fresh download, especially for a WordPress plugin `.zip` that's about to run on a real site.