> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.getrivet.ca/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Why Rivet doesn't record sessions or use an AI scribe > The deliberate decision against session recording, cloud transcription, and AI note generation — and what we built instead. The AI-scribe category exists. Mentalyc, Heidi, Freed, and a half-dozen competitors record therapy sessions, transcribe them, and generate SOAP/DAP drafts. Most telementalhealth platforms either ship recording themselves or integrate with one of those vendors. Rivet doesn't. Not as a "we'll get to it" — as a design choice. ## The short version A 50-minute therapy session is among the most sensitive PHI surfaces in healthcare. Recording it and shipping the audio (or transcript) to a cloud LLM means: now there's a copy of every word your client said, somewhere outside your control, processed by a system you don't operate. Even with the strictest architecture — local recording, short-term deletion, a signed agreement with the vendor — you've just moved a sensitive surface from "in the room" to "in a vendor's processing pipeline." The structured-template approach captures the same clinical data without the recording. PHQ-9, GAD-7, K10, DASS-21, PCL-5, target identification, SUDS, thought records, safety plans — these are the artifacts an AI scribe would try to extract from a transcript. Rivet captures them **as structured data, in-session, in the templates the client filled out**. The note can then auto-fill from that structured data deterministically, with no LLM, no transcript, and no recording. You write the formulation. Rivet provides the supporting structure. ## The full reasoning ### Clinical data stays in Canadian hands, not a cloud AI vendor Progress notes and completed assessments save to the client's record on Rivet's servers, in Canada. No third-party cloud AI sees them. The practitioner-private posture means notes are never sent to the client's device, and audio or session conversation never reaches Rivet at all. Rivet processes voicemails on its own hardware in Belle River, Ontario — not through a cloud AI vendor. Transcription runs locally; nothing is shipped to an external AI service. The same principle applies to the clinical work in a session: your notes are authored by you, with no LLM in the path. An AI-scribe recording pipeline is a fundamentally different shape: it requires that session audio — 50 minutes of a therapy conversation — travel to a cloud vendor, be transcribed, and be summarized by an LLM you don't operate. That's the privacy surface the structured-template approach sidesteps entirely. ### Clinical quality A SOAP or DAP note authored by you — with the structured template data sitting alongside in the same session summary — is clinically superior to an LLM reconstruction from a transcript. Your note carries inference and judgment that the transcript doesn't contain: formulation, treatment direction, risk assessment. AI session-notes' marketing pitch is "save typing time," not "produce better notes." The auto-fill engine cuts the typing without putting the inference in a black box. ### The structured data is already captured The clinical template library plus the EMDR 2.0 workspace already capture, in structured form, the data an AI session note would have to extract from a transcript. PHQ-9 scores. GAD-7 scores. K10 / DASS-21 / PCL-5 with cluster sums. EMDR target ID (NC / PC / VOC / SUDS baseline / body sensation). SUDS trajectory across BLS sets. Thought records. Safety plans. Sleep diaries. An LLM on a transcript is doing **information extraction from unstructured conversation** — an inference task with measurable error rates and known hallucination modes. An auto-fill engine on the templates is doing **information reformatting from already-extracted clinical data** — a deterministic merge. The first needs an LLM and a disclosure modal. The second needs neither. ### No hallucinated content reaches the chart An LLM-summarized note will, eventually, write something the client didn't say. Or attribute a symptom to the wrong session. Or get the medication wrong. The category's marketing materials acknowledge this and recommend "always review the generated note before signing." Practitioners do — but the burden of catching every mistake is real, and the rare-but-serious error rate is non-zero. The deterministic auto-fill engine doesn't have a hallucination mode. What lands in your draft is exactly what was in the source template, formatted for clinical reading. The only inference in the note is yours. ### No cloud AI processes PHI Rivet makes zero LLM calls during your session — no cloud transcription, no processing agreement to negotiate. The auto-fill engine runs in your browser. The voice-to-text dictation runs on the browser's built-in dictation (which may use a vendor cloud — same as iOS keyboard dictation — but never receives the session audio; only the words you dictate into the textarea). This isn't an absolute claim that no cloud AI is involved in any tool you use during your day. It's a claim about Rivet specifically: no session content, transcribed or summarized, leaves your browser via Rivet. ## What this means practically * **No recording.** The video session is peer-to-peer. The audio * video never reach a Rivet server in a re-playable form. Rivet cannot retroactively transcribe a session. * **No AI scribe.** No vendor integration, no "connect your Mentalyc account" button. * **No prompt engineering for clinical content.** The structured templates don't have LLM-generated text in them. The cognitive-distortions list, the safety-plan steps, the PHQ-9 items — all human-authored, citation-backed. * **Your dictation is yours.** Voice-to-text uses the browser's built- in dictation. Rivet never sees the audio. (Your browser might — Chrome routes dictation through Google's cloud, Safari handles it on-device. Same posture as your iOS keyboard.) * **The chart entry is yours.** When you paste the note into Jane or Owl, every clinical interpretation in it was written by you. No "AI-assisted" disclosure to your client, no provenance ambiguity. ## What if I want an AI scribe anyway? Use a separate tool alongside Rivet — there are several in the category, and they're designed to plug into any video platform. Rivet won't block you. But Rivet won't help, either: the audio never reaches us, so we can't pipe it to a vendor on your behalf. The third-party tool would handle the recording, transcription, and AI-summarization end of things; Rivet would still handle the session, the templates, and the structured data. The structured-template path is what Rivet bets on, and it earns the bet every time a note exports cleanly with no hallucinated content. ## Related articles What replaces the AI scribe — and how the deterministic merge works. The full posture behind practitioner-private notes. The broader Canadian-privacy posture Rivet is designed around.