"Your newsletter felt like someone holding my hand through an unfamiliar field. It had none of the jargon-heavy complexity I brace for in most tech newsletters—just clarity, warmth, and flow."
The days seem long and yet the weeks pass by too quickly as we enter the third month of 2026.
I slot an hour on the last day of every month to reflect upon my journey of building TinT and acknowledge the distance travelled.
In the 10 months that TinT has been running, the most memorable glimmers have been moments when we've crossed paths with clinicians who tinker with making and building.
This edition brings to you one such spark. Today we meet a trainee therapist who turned a napkin sketch into a tool for her everyday use.
Now, before you leap up from your seat to type an inspired LinkedIn post about how every creator is pushing AI onto people, hear me out:
I’m not saying all therapists should vibe code. I’m not even saying some should vibe code. With today’s newsletter, all I’m saying is, should you feel curious about vibe-coding, should you have an idea you’d like to try out – for a project, for your thesis, or simply to solve something that shows up in your practice – or should you be in the middle of a half-done project and are looking for inspiration...
...then I have just the thing for you.
Clinician But With A Builder's Mindset
Sugandha Wadhwa is currently a therapist in training at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.
As a trainee, she found herself drowning in case notes, spending more time organising the mess than actually thinking about the client and the case.
In Sugandha's words:
There’s plenty of systems out there to help with case notes. But I decided that the best one for me is the one I build, the one I know ins and outs of.
What Does A Trainee's Toolbox Look Like?
Sugandha built a dashboard to help her record, recall, and revise her case-studies.
Capturing the client profile
The following is a peek into Sugandha's thought process in her own words.
What compelled you to build a dashboard? Was there any pressing problem you were looking to solve?
My goal was to stop being a stenographer and start being a witness. When you’re buried in your notebook, you miss the person in front of you, the very things that build a bridge between you and the client.
Imagine meeting an acquaintance for the first three times and trying to just note down everything. They are definitely not excited to see you because they never got to meet YOU, only your notebook.
Worse is even is that the time allotted to “holding your client in your mind” goes into capturing everything on paper.
The dashboard frees me up to bring the case information out of the paper, and see it as an integration of elements that I can, see visually instead of just… write write write.
Recording the client's family systems
Why specifically build a dashboard? Why not a ledger, or a diary, or a google doc?
For a student, every case study feels like a mountain. I haven’t "automated" the clinical intuition yet, so my brain was just trying to keep up.
By using a structured, low-friction system (like a dashboard), I was seeking to free up my mental bandwidth to actually conceptualise the case rather than just recording data points.
The diaries and Google Docs come in handy during experimentation phases, when I try to sketch out maps of who my client is, but for this purpose, I needed clear repetition. Prompts that reminded me what the jargon meant, click options so I can choose instead of type every time.
Recording the conceptualisation for the case
How did it feel when you started to vibe-code and how did it feel by the end?
I had to set my values and priorities in place before I ever opened my laptop.
I ensured whatever I make is a need and not a whim, which is my cardinal rule. I ensured that I didn’t publish anything that can could even remotely put people at risk.
Vibe coding felt like knocking on doors I never thought I would even find!
I asked my friends who code to constantly to check and re-check the steps I’d written. I got to understand the real meaning of data, beyond my every-day impression of data as something I recharge my prepaid phone for, for Rs.50.
Listing possible interventions
What does this dashboard do, what purpose does it fulfil in your work?
It's simple. I offload the repetitiveness of my assignments onto the dashboard to allow space for my own growing, breathing and experimenting.
You don't teach a child to write by repeating the alphabet for years; at some point, we must move towards letting them fine-tune what is not adequate and then mix and match to create poetry. I believe trainee-therapists must learn to do that as well.
Noting process notes and reflections
Any part of the dashboard, any feature you use way more than you expected?
It’s easy to fall in love with your first clinical hypothesis and treatment option, which I did constantly. However, the flexibility of my dashboard helped me to pivot.
Instead of forcing the client to fit my favourite theory because "CBT has the best evidence for this on Google Scholar", here I saw the whole menu of options, allowing me to borrow a "spice" from one modality and a "tool" from another to find and track what actually works.
There's a detail in the dashboard, easily missable, that made me stop in my tracks and smile. :)
Notice the micro-copies under the titles:
Profile → The Face
Family → The System
Conceptualisation → The Brain
Interventions → The Hands
Reflections → The Mirror
In design we'd say you'd have a connection directly into the user's brain to be able to come up with metaphor for their mental model that is so seamlessly perfect it's almost poetic.
This little detail sets the standard that product builders in mental health innovation aspire to reach.
A standard that's possible only by working closely with clinicians. Or a standard set by a clinicians tinkering with building themselves!
We Got Something For You!
If you haven't heard already, over here at TinT we're running our first Product Thinking For Therapists cohort and dare I say it's going greaat?!!
There's a waitlist for Cohort #2 which has received WAYY more signups than I expected and which is why we're (drumroll please)...
... announcing a Cohort #3 & Cohort #4 of Product Thinking for Therapists!
ICYMI:AppliedProduct Thinking For Therapists is a 6 week async course for MHPs to understand how to deconstruct digital products. If you're looking to get into clinical product consulting, contribute at startups, deepen your understanding of AI in mental health, or simply want to be a conscious consumer of technology for your and your clients' sake, this is for you.
We're updating the website with further details and ability to sign up and join the course.
But since we're not big tech with big pockets it's taking us a tad longer than expected minute. Until then, if you'd like to know more, and join the waitlist, go here.
Waitlisters will hear first of the cohort's opening and will be privy to a special discount (of course we want to thank you for waiting!!)
That's all for today's edition from me!
I hope this incoming month of March treats you well.
I hope wherever you are, you find space to rest.
That leisure finds you. That you can sneak a moment away to watch a tree rustle in the wind, and listen to a bird song.
Take care and see soon, Harshali Founder, TinT
Follow along on @be_tint For more resources view the website Connect with me, Harshali on LinkedIn
I know you're enjoying this newsletter – most of you are reading right up till the end; analytics don't lie. Do me a favour and share it with a friend or in the team chat and tell them to sign up? The difference between a therapist and a solopreneur is simply the ability to generate multiple streams of income.
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