diff --git a/README b/README
index 8846b08..daf6a67 100644
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -208,7 +208,7 @@ Now open a new shell and run the same command again.
 
 You should see something like the follow as the output of each:
   "advertise_services"
-  ["/simple/hello"]
+  ["/simple/echo"]
 
 Now we need to run a mapper.  Mappers can be run from within your Merb or Rails app, from
 an interactive irb shell, or from the command line.  For this example we'll run it from the
@@ -237,7 +237,7 @@ This assumes that you have the agents running as indicated in the example above.
 
 $ cd nanite
 $ ./bin/nanite-mapper -i -u mapper -p testing -v /nanite
->> Nanite.request('/simple/hello') {|res| p res }
+>> Nanite.request('/simple/echo') {|res| p res }
 
 By default this will dispatch to the agent with the lowest reported load average.
 
diff --git a/examples/cli.rb b/examples/cli.rb
index 82a194f..8ab8aef 100755
--- a/examples/cli.rb
+++ b/examples/cli.rb
@@ -4,13 +4,36 @@
 require 'nanite'
 require 'nanite/mapper'
 
+# cli.rb
+#
+# You will need to have run the bin/rabbitconf script at least one time before you
+# run this so the expected users and vhosts are in place in RabbitMQ.
+#
+# You should also have started the 'simpleagent' nanite in a separate shell by running:
+#
+#  cd <NANITE>/examples/simpleagent
+#  nanite
+#
+# This test script takes a little more than 16 seconds to run since we start a new
+# mapper within, and pause while we wait for it to initialize, receive pings from
+# available agents (which have a default ping time of 15 seconds), and register
+# those agents and their methods.  When this process is presumed complete after
+# 16 seconds we can finally send the nanite agent the task to execute.
+
 Nanite.identity = Nanite.gensym
 
 EM.run {
   AMQP.start(:host => 'localhost', :user => 'mapper', :pass => 'testing', :vhost => '/nanite')
+
+  # start up a new mapper with a ping time of 15 seconds
   Nanite.mapper = Nanite::Mapper.new(15)
+
+  # have this run after 16 seconds so we can be pretty sure that the mapper
+  # has already received pings from running nanites and registered them.
   EM.add_timer(16) do
-    Nanite.request("/simple/hello", '') do |res|
+
+    # call our /simple/echo nanite, and pass it a string to echo back
+    Nanite.request("/simple/echo", "hello world!") do |res|
       p res
       EM.stop_event_loop
     end
diff --git a/examples/simpleagent/actors/simple.rb b/examples/simpleagent/actors/simple.rb
index 1538ac2..a1e134f 100644
--- a/examples/simpleagent/actors/simple.rb
+++ b/examples/simpleagent/actors/simple.rb
@@ -1,9 +1,11 @@
+# you can execute this nanite from the cli.rb command line example app
+
 class Simple < Nanite::Actor
 
-  expose :hello
+  expose :echo
 
-  def hello(payload)
-    "hello nanite"
+  def echo(payload)
+    "Nanite said #{payload.empty? ? "nothing at all" : payload} @ #{Time.now.to_s}"
   end
 
 end