Thunder Kitty for Therapists
Session notes without the privacy tradeoff
Thunder Kitty transcribes therapy sessions entirely on your Mac — no audio ever leaves the room.
Clinical documentation is one of the most demanding parts of private practice. You need accurate notes to support treatment planning, track progress, and meet professional standards — but taking notes during a session pulls you out of the room. Most therapists write up after the fact, reconstructing conversations from memory while the details fade. The tools that promise to fix this send your clients' audio to cloud servers for processing. Thunder Kitty doesn't. Everything — transcription, AI summaries, your notes — happens on your Mac. Nothing leaves.
The documentation problem most therapists know
Writing during sessions breaks rapport. Post-session notes are time-consuming and increasingly inaccurate the longer you wait. Cloud transcription tools solve the first problem but create a new one: your clients' most private disclosures — trauma histories, relationship details, mental health diagnoses — are routed through Deepgram, AssemblyAI, or OpenAI's infrastructure. Tools like Granola require a Business Associate Agreement precisely because they're handling your clients' data on external servers. Thunder Kitty doesn't require a BAA because it never receives your data. Audio is processed on your Mac using Apple's on-device speech engine. The transcript never leaves.
What a session looks like with Thunder Kitty
Before the session
Open Thunder Kitty and start a new note linked to the appointment. Add a quick agenda — intake questions, topics to revisit, goals for the session. The notepad is ready when you are.
During the session
Hit record. Transcription starts immediately using Apple's SpeechAnalyzer — the same engine behind Apple Intelligence, running entirely on-device. You stay present with your client. Thunder Kitty captures everything with accurate speaker separation, so you know who said what.
After the session
Thunder Kitty generates an AI summary of the session — key themes, clinical observations, anything worth flagging — using a local model on your Mac. Your notes and transcript save as a plain Markdown file in your Documents folder. Searchable, portable, owned entirely by you. No cloud dashboard. No vendor lock-in.
Why therapists choose Thunder Kitty
No BAA required — because we never receive your data
Business Associate Agreements exist to govern how vendors handle your clients' PHI on their servers. Thunder Kitty has no servers. Audio is processed on your Mac and never transmitted. There's nothing for a BAA to cover.
Real speaker separation, not a visual trick
Thunder Kitty does actual speaker diarization. Enroll your own voice once and it's always correctly labeled. Other participants are separated and labeled individually — Speaker 1, Speaker 2 — regardless of how many people are in the session. In Granola, everyone other than you is one undifferentiated stream.
Your notes are files you already own
Transcripts and session notes save as plain Markdown files in your Documents folder. Open them in any app, search across every session in Spotlight, point an AI at the whole folder and ask questions across your entire caseload. If you stop using Thunder Kitty, your notes don't disappear into a vendor's database.
Verify it yourself
Turn on Airplane Mode. Record a session. Read the transcript. The app works. That's not a privacy policy — it's a test you can run before your first real session.
Real-time session awareness, entirely on your device
Thunder Kitty tracks your session agenda in real time as the conversation progresses. If you set out to cover specific topics — risk assessment, homework review, treatment goals — you can see at a glance what's been discussed and what hasn't, without interrupting the session. Post-session, each agenda item gets its own AI summary generated entirely on your Mac. No cloud inference. No data leaving the room.
How therapists use it
- Transcribing individual therapy sessions for clinical notes
- Capturing couples or group sessions with accurate speaker labels
- Recording telehealth appointments via Zoom, FaceTime, or any platform
- Documenting supervision sessions and peer consultations
- Searching across session history by topic, client concern, or clinical theme
On compliance
Thunder Kitty doesn't make HIPAA claims — HIPAA compliance covers your entire workflow, not any single app. What we do say is simpler and more verifiable: no audio, transcript, or metadata ever reaches a server. No BAA is needed for data that never leaves your device. Turn on Airplane Mode and confirm it yourself.
Common questions
Does Thunder Kitty require a bot to join my calls?
No. Thunder Kitty captures audio directly from your Mac — your microphone and system audio — the same way QuickTime would. Nothing joins the meeting. The person on the other end gets no notification, no “Thunder Kitty has joined” prompt, nothing.
Does it work with Zoom, Teams, FaceTime, Meet, and other platforms?
Yes. Thunder Kitty isn’t platform-specific — it captures whatever audio is playing on your Mac, regardless of the app. Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Discord, FaceTime, phone calls via your iPhone’s Handoff, or no video app at all. If audio is happening on your Mac, Thunder Kitty can record it.
How accurate is the transcription?
Very. Thunder Kitty uses Apple’s SpeechAnalyzer — the same on-device engine powering Apple Intelligence — which delivers professional-grade accuracy for English, running entirely on your Mac. It handles natural speech, crosstalk, and varying audio quality well. Non-English language support depends on what Apple’s engine supports on your system.
What happens to my notes if I cancel my subscription?
Nothing changes. Your notes and transcripts are plain Markdown files sitting in a folder on your Mac. They were yours before you subscribed and they’re yours after you cancel. There’s nothing to export because there’s nothing locked in. You lose the recording and transcription functionality. You keep everything you’ve written and recorded.
Can I search across my entire meeting history?
Yes — in a few different ways. Your notes are plain Markdown files, so macOS Spotlight searches across all of them. You can also open the folder in Obsidian, iA Writer, or any notes app. For more powerful querying, Thunder Kitty runs as a local MCP server for Claude Desktop: ask questions across months of transcripts directly from Claude’s interface, with no data leaving your Mac.
Do I need a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) to use Thunder Kitty?
No — and the reason is the point. BAAs exist to govern how vendors handle your clients’ protected health information on their servers. Thunder Kitty has no servers. Audio is processed on your Mac and never transmitted anywhere. If we never receive your clients’ data, there’s nothing for a BAA to govern.
Is Thunder Kitty HIPAA compliant?
We don’t make HIPAA claims, because HIPAA compliance covers your entire workflow — client consent, documentation practices, access controls — not any single application. What we can say clearly, and what you can verify: no audio, transcript, or metadata ever reaches a server. Turn on Airplane Mode and the app still works. That’s the part that matters for data handling, and it’s testable before your first real session.
Will my client know they’re being recorded?
Thunder Kitty doesn’t join meetings as a bot and sends no notification to other participants. Whether and how to disclose recording to clients is a professional and ethical question governed by your licensing board and state law — not something Thunder Kitty decides for you. Many therapists obtain blanket recording consent in their intake paperwork. What Thunder Kitty changes is the data-handling question, not the consent question.
Can Thunder Kitty handle couples therapy or group sessions with multiple speakers?
Yes. Thunder Kitty does real speaker diarization — each voice in the session is separated and labeled individually in the transcript (Speaker 1, Speaker 2, Speaker 3, and so on). You can also enroll your own voice once so it’s always labeled correctly as you. The transcript reflects who said what, regardless of how many participants are in the session.
Can I use Thunder Kitty for telehealth sessions on Zoom or other platforms?
Yes. Thunder Kitty captures system audio from your Mac, so it works with any telehealth platform — Zoom, Doxy.me, SimplePractice’s telehealth feature, FaceTime, or anything else. The client’s end is unchanged. Your Mac captures both sides of the call locally.
Try Thunder Kitty free for 7 days. No credit card. No account. Just a download.
Download for macOSTry it with a practice recording before your first real session. Airplane mode on. If it works, you'll know.