AI Therapy Notes Without Recording Your Sessions

Get the Benefits of AI Assistance—Without an AI Scribe Listening In

AI can be genuinely useful for clinical documentation. But using AI shouldn’t have to mean recording, transcribing, or uploading your therapy sessions.

Note Designer® takes a different approach.

Our optional Ethical AI tools help mental health professionals create and refine their clinical notes based on the information they choose to provide.

No session recording.

No session transcription.

No need to capture your clients’ private and confidential disclosures in order to create a progress note.

Start your free demo

AI Assistance and AI Scribes Are Not the Same Thing

Most AI therapy scribes begin by capturing the therapy session itself. Audio is recorded or processed, the conversation is transcribed or analyzed, and AI then generates a clinical note.

Note Designer works differently.

You remain the source of the clinical information.

You decide what is important, what is clinically relevant, and what belongs in the record. Note Designer then helps you turn that information into professional documentation.

That distinction matters to us.

The therapeutic encounter contains far more than what belongs in a progress note. Our approach allows clinicians to benefit from AI without making the entire therapy session the raw material for their documentation.

Two Ways to Use Our Ethical AI

Note Designer’s AI Auto Note

Provide your own brief clinical input and let Note Designer’s AI Auto Note help you transform it into a professionally written progress note.

You decide what information goes in.

Note Designer’s AI Rewrite

Already know what you want to say?

Write it in your own words, or use our handy dropdown menus of content, and have AI Rewrite help make the language clearer, more concise, or more professional.

In both cases, you review and control the final documentation.

Built for Therapy Documentation

Note Designer combines optional AI assistance with the extensive clinical documentation tools mental health professionals have been using for more than 10 years.

Create SOAP, DAP, BIRP, PIRP, GIRP, SIRP, PIE and other progress notes, as well as treatment plans, intake documentation, risk notes, and termination or discharge notes.

Choose professionally written clinical content from more than 25 treatment approaches and customize it to reflect your work.

AI is an additional tool—not the foundation of the program.

Privacy Isn’t an Afterthought

Note Designer was designed around a simple principle: clinicians should remain in control of their clinical information.

Our AI is privately hosted in a HIPAA-compliant AWS environment. Your AI inputs and outputs are not stored or used to train the AI model.

And because Note Designer doesn’t require session recording or transcription, your clients’ private disclosures don’t need to become part of the AI documentation process in the first place.

Don’t Want AI? That’s Fine Too.

We mean it when we say AI is optional.

Clinicians and organizations that prefer to avoid AI entirely can use Note Designer Classic, our original non-AI documentation program.

The choice remains yours.

Common Questions and Answers

• Can I use AI for therapy notes without recording my sessions?
  • Yes. Note Designer provides optional AI assistance for clinical documentation without recording or transcribing therapy sessions. The clinician decides what information to provide and remains in control of the note-writing process.
• Does Note Designer record or transcribe therapy sessions?
  • No. Note Designer does not listen to, record or transcribe therapy sessions. Your clients’ private conversations remain outside the documentation software.
• Is Note Designer an AI scribe?
  • No. Note Designer takes a different approach from AI scribes that create documentation from recordings or transcripts of therapy sessions. Note Designer begins with the clinician’s own observations, judgment and selected clinical information.
• Can I choose when to use AI in Note Designer?
  • Yes. AI is an optional feature in Note Designer. Clinicians decide whether and when to use AI assistance and can continue to create notes without AI whenever they prefer.
• What information does Note Designer’s AI receive?
  • The clinician chooses what information to provide to the AI. Note Designer is designed so that identifying patient information does not need to be sent to the AI in order to assist with clinical documentation.
• Are my AI inputs and outputs used to train an AI model?
  • No. Note Designer’s AI inputs and outputs are not stored, shared or used to train AI models. Its AI operates using a privately hosted model in a HIPAA-compliant AWS environment.
• Can I use Note Designer without AI at all?
  • Yes. Clinicians who prefer not to use AI can create their notes without it. Note Designer also offers Note Designer Classic, a completely non-AI version.

Further Reading on AI and Clinical Documentation

 Explore our articles on the ethical and clinical implications of using AI in psychotherapy documentation—and why we believe clinicians should remain in control of what enters the clinical record.

1. The Silent Third Party: Ethical Dilemmas of AI-Powered Transcription-Based Documentation and its Potential Threat to the Therapeutic Process
2. What We Lose When We Outsource Our Minds: The Hidden Cost of AI Scribes in Therapy Documentation
3. Should AI Scribes Be Used in Psychotherapy? – Further Reflections
4. How Does Note Designer Differ from Other AI Note Programs?
5. APA’s New Ethical Guidance for Using AI in Clinical Practice
6. What Therapists Are Really Saying About AI in Practice—and Why Ethics May Matter More Than Innovation

A Different Approach to Clinical Documentation

Note Designer has been helping mental health professionals write their clinical notes for more than a decade.

AI has given us powerful new tools. We believe those tools should support clinical judgment—not replace it.

Get AI assistance without recording your therapy sessions.

Start your free demo