diff --git a/tests/conftest.py b/tests/conftest.py
index 37054626..8724ead5 100644
--- a/tests/conftest.py
+++ b/tests/conftest.py
@@ -97,10 +97,48 @@ assert ast.parse(WINDOWS_SHIM_TEMPLATE.format(spoofer=repr(r"C:\\Temp\\file.py")
 def spoof(tmp_path_factory, **kwargs):
     """Modify PATH to override subprocess executables
 
-    spoof(program1='replacement', ...)
+    spoof(tmp_path_factory, program1='replacement', ...)
 
-    Creates temporary directory with symlinks to targets.
+    For the test suite we need a way override executables, so that we can
+    substitute desired results such as errors or just speed up OCR.
 
+    On POSIXish platforms we create a temporary folder with overrides that
+    are symlinks to the executables we want to run. We do not actually override
+    PATH. We also set an environment variable _OCRMYPDF_TEST_PATH, which
+    OCRmyPDF's subprocess wrapper will check before they use regular PATH. The
+    output is a folder full of executables we are overriding. We can override
+    multiple executables. The end result is a folder we can use in a PATH-style
+    lookup to override some executables:
+
+        /tmp/abcxyz/tesseract -> ocrmypdf/tests/resources/spoof/tesseract_crash.py
+        /tmp/abcxyz/gs -> ocrmypdf/tests/resources/spoof/gs_backflip.py
+
+    Windows needs extra help from us because usually, only the Administrator
+    can create symlinks. Instead we create small Python scripts that call
+    the programs we want, implementing the effect of a symlink. This is cleaner
+    than creating Windows executables or trying to use non-Python scripts.
+    The temporary folder generated for Windows could like:
+
+        %TEMP%\abcxyz\tesseract.py:
+            (script that runs ocrmypdf/tests/resources/spoof/tesseract_crash.py)
+        %TEMP%\abcxyz\gswin32c.py:
+            (script that runs ocrmypdf/tests/resources/spoof/gs_backflip.py)
+        %TEMP%\abcxyz\gswin64c.py:
+            (script that runs ocrmypdf/tests/resources/spoof/gs_backflip.py)
+
+    We also address one quirk here, that Ghostscript may be known as gswin32c
+    or gswin64c, depending on what the user installed (regardless of Windows
+    itself). On POSIX, Ghostscript is just 'gs'.  We handle the special case here
+    too.
+
+    All of this is intimately dependent on the machinery in ocrmypdf.exec.run().
+    In particular, for Windows, that code has to know that if there is a .py
+    file, it needs to run it with Python, since Windows does not like being
+    asked to execute files.
+
+    We don't overload PATH directly because we have some tests where we call
+    ocrmypdf as a subprocess (to exercise the command line interface) and some
+    tests where we call it as an API.
     """
     env = os.environ.copy()
     slug = '-'.join(v.replace('.py', '') for v in sorted(kwargs.values()))