QCD description of hadronic tau decays

The QCD analysis of hadronic τ decays is reviewed and a summary of the present phenomenological status is presented. The following topics are discussed: the determination of from the inclusive τ hadronic width, the measurement of |Vus| through the Cabibbo-suppressed decays of the τ, and the extraction of chiral-perturbation-theory couplings from the spectral tau data.