Topic · AI notes for TherapyNotes (the EHR)
AI therapy notes for TherapyNotes — on-device SOAP drafts that paste cleanly into the progress-note editor
TherapyNotes is the EHR with the most structured progress-note editor in the solo-practice market — discrete fields for Subjective, Objective, Assessment, and Plan, plus separate templated sections for Risk and Interventions. That structure rewards an AI scribe that produces clean, section-labeled output. TherapyDraft does, locally, on your Mac.
TL;DR
This page is about the EHR called TherapyNotes (TherapyNotes, LLC) — not "therapy notes" as a generic term. As of 2026, TherapyNotes does not ship a built-in AI scribe. Every third-party AI scribe that markets a "TherapyNotes integration" is a cloud vendor that takes your session audio, processes it on their servers, and returns text. TherapyDraft is the inverse: there's no integration. The recording lives on your Mac, the transcription runs on your Mac, the drafting runs on your Mac, and the result is a paste-ready, section-labeled note that drops cleanly into TherapyNotes' structured progress-note fields. No subprocessor, no extra BAA, no audio leaving the building.
The state of AI in TherapyNotes as of 2026
TherapyNotes' product strength has historically been billing automation and structured documentation — not AI features. The 2025 release added an "AI summary" tool that generates a cover-letter-style synopsis from existing chart entries, but it does not transcribe sessions and does not draft progress notes from audio. For session-to-note drafting, TherapyNotes points clinicians to third-party tools, all of which today are cloud scribes. That leaves a gap: clinicians who chose TherapyNotes specifically because of its structured-documentation rigor are the same clinicians least comfortable streaming session audio to a new vendor's cloud. TherapyDraft is built for that gap.
The TherapyDraft → TherapyNotes workflow
- Record or import audio. Record on your Mac directly, or import from your session-recording app of choice. The file is stored in TherapyDraft's local Application Support directory and never leaves it.
- Draft locally. Click "Draft," choose SOAP (TherapyNotes' default progress-note shape), and wait 2–5 minutes while whisper.cpp transcribes and Qwen 2.5 14B drafts on-device. No network call leaves the app — the macOS network-sandbox entitlement is set to deny by design.
- Choose the TherapyNotes export preset. The export menu has a "TherapyNotes-paste" option that emits each SOAP section as a self-contained paragraph with the section label as a leading bold line. This shape matches TherapyNotes' progress-note field layout one-to-one.
- Paste section-by-section into the progress-note editor. Open the session in TherapyNotes, click into the Subjective field, paste; click into Objective, paste; and so on. The four pastes take roughly fifteen seconds. TherapyNotes' editor handles plain-text paragraphs without mangling them.
- Review, sign, submit. The note is yours to review and sign in TherapyNotes exactly as if you'd typed it. TherapyNotes' audit log records you as the author — which is correct, because clinical responsibility for the note is yours; TherapyDraft only produced a draft.
Typical end-to-end time on a 50-minute session: 2 minutes of local drafting plus 3–5 minutes of in-place review and editing in TherapyNotes' editor. That's roughly 15–25 minutes of typing replaced by 5 minutes of clinical review.
Why TherapyNotes' structure makes paste-fidelity matter more than usual
SimplePractice's progress note is a single rich-text body. TherapyNotes' is a set of discrete fields with their own validation. That difference cuts two ways:
- Structure helps clean export. When the AI emits "Subjective: …" as a separate paragraph, it maps directly to TherapyNotes' Subjective field — no re-parsing, no manual line-breaking. Cloud scribes that emit one big body of text leave you doing that splitting work yourself.
- Structure makes audit cleaner. TherapyNotes' chart audit shows which field was edited when. Pasting section-by-section produces an audit trail that mirrors how human-written notes get entered. That's what reviewers and supervisors expect to see.
This is why TherapyDraft's TherapyNotes preset emits four short, labeled paragraphs rather than one long body. The same preset is available for DAP (three sections), BIRP (four), and GIRP (four).
Why this beats an "integrated" cloud scribe for TherapyNotes users
- The audio never leaves your Mac. Cloud scribes upload session audio to their servers. That's a new subprocessor for your Notice of Privacy Practices, a new breach surface, a new BAA to chase. TherapyDraft adds zero of those — the audio file lives in your Application Support directory and is deleted when you delete it.
- You review before submitting. The fifteen-second per-section paste is a real clinical-quality gate. Auto-write integrations are where bad-AI-output-in-chart incidents happen — TherapyNotes' audit log will faithfully record whatever the integration submitted, even if it's wrong.
- TherapyNotes' BAA scope stays tight. TherapyNotes' BAA covers TherapyNotes' handling of your data. It does not cover what other vendors do with audio you ship to them. Every vendor you add expands the breach surface; an external-Mac-tool-plus-paste workflow expands it by zero.
What to paste for each note type in TherapyNotes
TherapyNotes' editor accepts plain text and paragraph breaks but is most reliable with short labeled paragraphs rather than markdown. TherapyDraft's exports honor that:
- SOAP — four labeled paragraphs (Subjective, Objective, Assessment, Plan). Each maps to a TherapyNotes field of the same name.
- DAP — three labeled paragraphs (Data, Assessment, Plan). For TherapyNotes' SOAP-shaped editor, the Data paragraph typically pastes into Subjective + Objective combined.
- BIRP — Behavior, Intervention, Response, Plan. Common among insurance-billing-heavy caseloads, well-aligned to TherapyNotes' structured intervention fields.
- GIRP — Goals, Intervention, Response, Plan. Pairs naturally with TherapyNotes' treatment-plan goals.
All four formats are in every plan, including the free trial. Switch presets from the export menu — "TherapyNotes-paste" is the default for SOAP-shaped EHRs.
For clinicians on other EHRs
The same workflow applies to SimplePractice, TheraNest, Jane, Valant, and anything else with a rich-text or plain-text progress-note editor. Each EHR has its own export preset; paste fidelity is tested quarterly against each editor's web interface so an editor update doesn't quietly mangle the formatting.
Related questions
Is this an integration with TherapyNotes?
No. There is no API call to TherapyNotes, no credentials shared, no data exchanged with TherapyNotes' servers. You paste text into TherapyNotes' editor in the same way you'd paste from a Word document. The clinical authority and audit trail stay entirely inside TherapyNotes.
Will TherapyNotes' audit log show the AI as a contributor?
No. TherapyNotes records you as the author, because the field was edited by you while logged in. The AI did not author the note in any chart-of-record sense — it produced a draft you reviewed, edited, and signed. That's the correct legal and clinical posture.
What about diagnosis and procedure codes?
TherapyDraft drafts the narrative note. It does not auto-code. Diagnosis (ICD-10) and procedure (CPT) codes are clinical-judgment decisions that belong in TherapyNotes' billing-code picker where you can see TherapyNotes' own validation rules. We deliberately don't touch this.
Does this work for group practice on TherapyNotes?
Yes, but with the caveat that each clinician needs their own TherapyDraft license on their own Mac. There's no central server because there's no server at all. For group-practice billing, the per-clinician $39/mo or $349/yr applies; volume pricing is on the pricing page.
Does TherapyNotes know I'm using an AI scribe?
Not unless you tell them. There is no integration, no token, no signed-in session against TherapyNotes' API. From TherapyNotes' perspective, you typed (well, pasted) the note into the editor — which is a workflow they explicitly support.