Document consumer and internal loading flows

docs/consumers/README.md

@@ -6,6 +6,30 @@ applications. Consumers still own their configuration structs, defaults, semanti
 validation, schema-version policy, CLI parsing, runtime matching and conversion,
 resource checks, remote acquisition, and service initialization.
 
+## Choosing a loading entry point
+
+- Use [`Load`](../../lifecycle.go) with one source for an ordinary configuration.
+  [`SearchConfig`](../../discovery.go) is also a source, so its explicit
+  discovery result can be passed to `Load` or used as the main input to
+  [`LoadLayered`](../../layered.go).
+- Use `LoadLayered` when inputs must be composed in underlay groups before the
+  main source. Each [`Input`](../../layered.go) owns its source, filesystem,
+  destination, and import choice. The overlay filesystem context is selected
+  independently in [`LayeredOptions`](../../layered.go).
+- Load-wide rules belong to [`Options`](../../lifecycle.go) or
+  [`LayeredOptions`](../../layered.go): the application definition (including
+  version policy), import defaults, and explicit overrides. These do not turn
+  on imports or discovery by themselves. See the
+  [configuration contract](../config.md#layered-loading) and
+  [discovery contract](../config.md#configuration-discovery) for exact rules.
+
+The root [README example](../../README.md) shows the small `Load` path.
+[`layered.go`](../../examples/consumers/layered.go) demonstrates the bundled
+file and layered cases. For import-focused adoption, see the
+[prompt catalog](../../examples/consumers/prompt_catalog.go); for explicit
+discovery composed with sequences, see the
+[sequence catalog](../../examples/consumers/sequence_catalog.go).
+
 The maintained [`examples/consumers`](../../examples/consumers) package demonstrates
 sanitized shapes using only ConfigKit and the Go standard library: