# Marcus Okonkwo, LPC — read of Therapy AI, May 13 2026

> 9 years in practice, solo shop in East Nashville, 22 active clients, currently running SimplePractice and a Calendly hack I am not proud of. I coach my son's U9 soccer team Saturday mornings, which means Friday nights are note-catching-up nights. That is the whole reason I clicked.

## How I got here

Someone in the Facebook group "Therapist Peer Support Network" posted "has anyone tried this therapy AI note thing?" and then immediately two people replied with the product link before the original poster even named it, which made me suspicious it was planted. But I bookmarked it anyway because the original poster's complaint -- "I have 7 sessions on Thursdays and I'm writing at midnight" -- described my last two Thursdays exactly. Came back to it this morning with coffee.

## What I clicked first

"CHART WITHOUT THE DREAD" stopped me. That is a real phrase that real therapists say. I have said it. It is not "streamline your documentation workflow," it is dread. Someone talked to therapists before writing this, or at minimum read enough Reddit threads to understand the emotional texture of the problem. The sub-head "Charting takes 30 minutes and creates liability anxiety" is also accurate in a way that most sales pages are not. The liability piece is specific. Most tools just say "save time." This one named the fear underneath the time, which is that a bad note gets you in front of a licensing board.

## Where I paused

The testimonial from Diana K.: "I filled 11 cancelled slots in the first month just from the waitlist automation. That is over $1,700 I would have lost to no-shows." That number is specific enough to feel real. $1,700 at $155 a session is exactly 11 sessions. Someone actually did the math rather than rounding to a clean number. That specificity made me read it twice.

## What I distrusted

Three things, in order of how much they bothered me.

First, "94% less intake friction." What is intake friction measured in? Minutes? Calls? Reschedule rate? I have no idea what this number means or how it was calculated from 80 beta users. It reads like someone put a metric-shaped thing next to a real metric (2.8 hrs) to make the section feel more grounded.

Second, the testimonials use first name and last initial only. Sarah M., Rodrigo V., Diana K. I cannot verify a single one of them. At $49 a month, I am not handing over my client intake data to a company I cannot confirm has real customers. A LinkedIn profile, a full name, a website, anything. The "Dr. Ellen Park, LPC, Portland OR" in the hero at least has a title and city, but I googled it and nothing obvious came up.

Third, this line in the FAQ: "Direct API integrations with SimplePractice and Jane App are on the roadmap for Q3 2026." That means right now the workflow is: Therapy AI generates a note, I export it as a PDF or plain text, and I paste it into SimplePractice. That is not "admin that disappears." That is a new app I have to context-switch into, plus a copy-paste step, plus reviewing the AI output for accuracy before signing it. The onboarding section says "Let it run" like the friction is gone, but the FAQ quietly reveals there is a seam in the middle of the workflow I would have to manage manually for at least the next 7 months.

## What would convince me

Show me one actual generated SOAP note. Not a description of a SOAP note. The real output, with a fake client scenario, so I can judge whether it would need 30 seconds of cleanup or 10 minutes of rewriting. That single thing would answer 80% of my questions.

Also: tell me what happens to the audio. When I dictate a 60-second voice memo, where does that file go, who processes the transcription, what model is doing it, and is the audio deleted after transcription? That is not a pedantic HIPAA question. That is a licensing board question. If a client says something suicidal in session and I dictate a memo that ends up on some server I do not control, I need to know what my exposure is. The page says "HIPAA compliant by design" and mentions a BAA but does not touch the audio retention question at all.

## What I'd ask in an email reply

1. The note generation step -- after I dictate, how long before the draft is ready, and what does editing typically look like for clinicians using it? Are people accepting drafts mostly as-is or are they rewriting a third of it?

2. Who is processing the transcription? Is it Whisper running on your servers, a third-party API, or something else? And what is the data retention policy for the raw audio files?

3. You mention 80 beta therapists. Are any of them open to a 10-minute call? Not a sales call, just another clinician I can ask the same questions to.

## Verdict: on-the-fence

The page understands the problem better than 90% of the practice management tools I have looked at, and the pricing is not insulting. But the gap between "admin that disappears" and "paste your note into SimplePractice until Q3" is real, and I want to know exactly what I am handing my audio to before I try this with an actual client file.

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*Memo by skeptic persona, generated 2026-05-13. Studio breaks own self-grading loop.*