You leave a therapy session having had what felt like a real insight, and by Wednesday you can't quite remember what it was. By the next session two weeks later, you've half-remembered the framing your therapist used, you've forgotten the homework, and you're starting from a fresher version of the same conversation you were already mid-way through.
This is the most common failure mode in therapy: the work of the session evaporates between sessions. Therapy compounds when between-session notes carry the work forward, mood and pattern data inform what you bring into the room, and the longer arc of what's actually changing stays visible to you. Most people don't keep notes because they don't have a private place for them, and pen-and-paper journals are hard to search later.
A vault that's yours alone — with no one else in it — gives the work somewhere to live. Below is the shape we'd suggest.
A quick note up front: this is a notes setup, not a clinical tool. The vault doesn't replace a therapist, doesn't diagnose anything, and doesn't have any clinical certifications behind it. It's a private place to carry the work forward between sessions and to track patterns over time. Talk to your clinician about anything clinical.
A private vault — single-user, one parent page, child pages for the dimensions
Docapybara is single-user by design. The vault is yours; nobody else is in it; nothing in it leaves unless you export it. That matters for therapy notes more than for almost any other category. The notes are private working material, not content you'd want shared with a team or stored in a system that any colleague could browse. Pages nest indefinitely, OneNote-style, and the agent searches the whole tree. The structure is yours; the privacy is the default.
In Docapybara, Therapy (or whatever you'd like to call it) gets a top-level page. Underneath sit child pages for Sessions, Between sessions, Patterns, Homework, Reading, and whatever else fits how you work in therapy. Each section grows at its own pace. Some weeks the Sessions page gets one entry; some weeks the Between sessions page gets four. The agent treats it all as one searchable surface.
Sessions — the hour itself, captured in your own words
The most useful notes are the ones taken right after the session, not during. During the session, you're in the work — taking notes pulls you out. After the session is when you can capture what mattered.
A Sessions page tree with one child per session, dated. Voice is the right tool. After the session, walk around the block and talk for two or three minutes. Audio recording in-app gives you a transcript with speaker labels. The transcript lands on the page. You can clean it up later or leave it raw.
The agent can summarize: "Summarize today's session — main themes, anything we agreed to try this week, anything I felt strongly about." That summary becomes the version of the session you'll re-read on Wednesday when memory is faded.
For longer therapeutic relationships (months or years with the same therapist), the agent can pull patterns: "Across the last three months of session notes, what themes keep coming up?" That's the kind of meta-view that's hard to get otherwise and often what therapists themselves are trying to surface.
Between sessions — the work that's actually doing the work
The Between sessions page is where the actual change happens, if it happens. Every time something comes up that connects to therapy — the conversation that triggered something, the situation where you noticed yourself doing the old pattern, the small win where you did something different — drop a note.
Voice works well here too. "At work today, [colleague] did the thing they do, and I noticed myself wanting to react the way I always do. Caught it. Did something different. Felt weird but okay." Thirty seconds. Transcript lands on the page.
The agent can pull these for the next session: "What came up between sessions in the last two weeks that I want to bring into Friday's appointment?" Comes back with the relevant entries. You walk into the session with a real list, not a vague "some stuff happened."
For the broader between-session check-in shape — the daily pulse, not just therapy-specific — the The Capture Habit: Remembering the Things That Actually Matter approach works alongside this. Same low-friction capture, different framing.
Patterns — the page where you connect the dots
The Patterns page is the slowest-building and often the most valuable. It's where you record the things that show up across multiple situations, the dynamics with specific people that keep recurring, the reactions you keep noticing in yourself.
These don't get written in the moment. They emerge. Once a month, sit with the Sessions and Between sessions pages for ten minutes. Voice-note what you're noticing. "Looking back at the last month, I keep noticing the pattern where I shut down when [specific kind of situation] happens. Came up with [colleague], with [family member], and once with [partner]. Same shape each time." Transcript lands on Patterns.
The agent can summarize: "Across the patterns I've noted this year, what are the top three or four that keep recurring?" That meta-pattern view is useful for the "what should we work on next" conversation in therapy. (For the broader long-arc personal-archive shape, Turn Casual Captures Into a Searchable Life Archive covers it.)
Homework — what your therapist asked you to try
If your therapy involves homework — exposures, journaling prompts, behavioral experiments, relational repairs — the Homework page tracks what was assigned, when, what you actually did, and what happened.
An inline database via the :::database::: directive captures it: assigned date, what the homework is, status (in progress, completed, didn't do), notes on how it went. The agent can summarize: "What homework has my therapist assigned in the last two months, and what did I actually do?" Useful for the honest conversation about whether you're actually doing the work or just talking about doing it.
For homework that involves writing — journaling prompts, letters you draft but don't send, the what would I say if I could exercise — the writing itself can land on a sub-page. The agent can summarize across journal entries: "What recurring themes show up in my journaling from this quarter?"
Mood and patterns over time — the data that actually helps
Mood tracking apps exist and work fine, but they don't connect to anything else in your life. The vault makes the connection: a mood score on a day where you also have notes about a hard conversation, a poor night of sleep, a missed meal, or a stressful work week becomes meaningful.
A simple inline database with date, mood (1-10 or whatever scale fits you), sleep hours, anything notable, and a free-text what's going on column. Voice works for the daily entry — "Today, mood about a 6, slept seven hours, work was fine but had a tense call with [person] in the afternoon." Thirty seconds. Agent files the row.
The agent can pull patterns: "Over the last two months of mood data, what days had the lowest mood, and what was going on those days?" Sometimes the pattern is sleep. Sometimes it's a specific person. Sometimes it's a recurring work situation. Hard to see without the running data; obvious with it.
For the broader self-tracking shape this fits into — daily reflection, journaling, ongoing self-work — A Notes Setup for People with Executive Function Challenges covers a related case where the same kind of vault carries running self-knowledge.
Privacy, exports, and the boundary you'd want
One more page worth naming first: Reading and resources. Most people in therapy also do some reading on the side — about the modality their therapist uses, about specific issues they're working on, about adjacent frameworks. The page captures it: title, what you got from it, anything you want to bring up with your therapist. For PDFs of articles or chapters your therapist suggested, drop them on the page — Docapybara converts uploads to markdown via docstrange, so the agent can read them. "In the chapter [therapist] suggested on attachment styles, what was the section on earned secure attachment?" gets answered with the actual content. The agent can pull connections: "Across my therapy reading and my session notes, what themes overlap?" Useful for noticing that a framework you read about three months ago is now showing up in the work.
A few practical notes on privacy.
The vault is single-user — no shared workspaces, no team that can browse it, no notification that surfaces content elsewhere. If you want to share specific notes with your therapist (a between-session entry, a pattern you noticed), you can copy the relevant text into an email or print the page. There's no native therapist-portal feature; that's intentional.
For account security, use a strong password and enable two-factor authentication if you can. The vault holds private content; treat the account access the way you'd treat any private archive.
For ongoing pricing details, see /pricing/ — most therapy users do fine on the free tier.
A starter shape for the first month
If you're moving from no notes to a vault, this is what we'd suggest:
- Therapy — top-level parent
- Sessions — page tree, one child per session, voice notes after each
- Between sessions — running notes
- Patterns — monthly ten-minute reflection
- Homework — inline database (if your therapy involves it)
- Mood data — daily inline database (optional but useful)
- Reading — books, articles, podcasts, frameworks
That's it. Don't try to retro-fill old sessions. Start with this week. The vault grows the way the work grows.
The point isn't to turn therapy into a project. It's that the work between sessions stays alive, the patterns become visible, and the longer arc of what's changing in you becomes something you can actually see.
Try Docapybara free — start with the Sessions page and a voice note after your next appointment, and the work will start carrying forward.