The goal of the Compact Ignition Tokamak (CIT) program is to provide a cost-effective route to the production of a burning deuterium-tritium plasma, so that alpha-particle effects may be studied. A key issue to be studied in the CIT is whether alpha power behaves like other power sources in affecting tokamak plasma confinement. The program is managed by the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and includes broad community involvement. Guidelines for the preliminary design effort have been provided by the Ignition Technical Oversight Committee in discussion with the tokamak community. The reference design is a tokamak with a high field (10 T), high current (10 MA), a poloidal divertor, and liquid-nitrogen-cooled coils. It is a small, high-power-density device of the type proposed by Bruno Coppi (MIT). It has a major radius of 1.23 m, a minor radius of 0.43 m, and a plasma ellipticity of 1.8. This paper reviews the aims of the program and the basis for the physics guidelines. The role of the CIT in the longer-term tokamak program is briefly discussed.