For counseling students · techniques class through practicum
Practicum starts in eight weeks. Start practicing now.
Rehearse the intake, the silence, and the "are you a real counselor?" question before they're real—with a coach who codes your reps the same way your CCS-R does.
First demo: no account. Three free clips after you create one — no card. Fictional clients only.
Clip · Silent client
Objective: Sit with it.
- Marcus, client:
I don't know. I guess it's fine.
- You, counselor:
It's fine.
- Marcus, client:
…
- Marcus, client:
My dad used to say that. "It's fine."
§ 01The problem
Two triads and a rubric is not enough seat time.
Your techniques class taught you the microskills in order: attending, encouragers, paraphrase, reflection of feeling, open questions, summarizing, confrontation, immediacy. Then you taped a triad or two, got a CCS-R back, and moved on. Practicum doesn't move on. It hands you a real person on a Tuesday and asks for forty direct hours.
Example clips
Track A · Foundations
Reflection of feeling only.
Get through the first three minutes without asking a question.
Track C · Intake
The intake, first ten minutes.
Structured opening, limits of confidentiality, presenting concern.
Track B · Hard moments
"Are you even a real counselor?"
A client tests you in the first session.
§ 02How it works
Practice one corner at a time.
An F1 driver doesn't practice by running full laps. They isolate one corner—brake point, line, exit—drill it until it's automatic, then move to the next. Same idea here. One moment, one skill, five to ten minutes.
- 1
Pick a corner.
Every clip has one objective and one fictional client. "Get through the first three minutes using only reflections." "The client goes quiet — sit with it." Five to ten minutes, not fifty.
- 2
Run the rep.
Text by default, voice when you want to practice pacing. Pause for a hint, rewind one turn, try a different line. The client never breaks character to judge you.
- 3
Read the telemetry.
After each rep: your reflection-to-question ratio, how many times you reached for advice, and three moments — one that worked, one you missed, one the client handed you. Then one recommended next rep.
Foundations track · one corner per microskill
§ 03Seat time
A rep, annotated.
Client lines on the left, your lines on the right. The coach writes in the margin, attached to the exact turn it’s about, and never during the rep.
Coaching is grounded in the same instruments your program grades with — the CCS-R, the Counseling Skills Scale, and MITI behavior codes — and shown to you as rep stats, not a grade.
Clip · Just tell me what to do
Objective: respond to a direct request for advice without giving advice or refusing.
- Denise, client:
I've read all the books. I know the stages. I just want you to tell me what I'm supposed to be doing at four months so I can stop feeling like I'm doing it wrong.
- You, counselor:
It sounds like you've been working really hard to grieve the "right" way, and it's exhausting to feel like you're still failing at it.
- Denise, client:
...Yeah. My sister just seems fine. She went back to work after a week.
- You, counselor:
Why do you think she was able to do that?
§ 04The hard moments
The moments your classmates can't play convincingly.
01
Silence.
The client stops talking. You don't fill it.
02
"Just tell me what to do."
A direct request for advice, and the righting reflex.
03
Crying.
In minute two. What do you say, and what do you not say?
04
Angry at you.
"This isn't helping." Stay in the room.
05
Mandated and resentful.
They don't want to be here and they've told you so.
06
One-word answers.
A sixteen-year-old with nothing to say.
07
"Have you been through this?"
The self-disclosure question.
08
Running out of time.
Close a session that isn't finished.
09
Passive suicidal ideation.
A disclosure, handled with a script your supervisor would recognize.
10
A disclosure that changes everything.
When a mandated-reporting moment arrives inside an ordinary conversation.
Risk and abuse-disclosure clips are tightly scripted, reviewed by a counselor educator, capped in intensity, and always end with what real supervision would say plus crisis resources. They unlock after the foundations track.
§ 05The pit wall
Feedback you'd trust from a good supervisor.
Practicing with feedback works. Practicing without it doesn’t. A randomized study of novice counselors found that AI feedback improved reflections and questions; without it, students made no gains and empathy scores actually fell. So the coach isn’t a feature—it’s the whole product.
After every rep you get:
- Rep stats. Reflection-to-question ratio, percent open questions, complex reflections, advice-giving count, longest client monologue you allowed, talk-time split. Compared to your last three reps.
- Three moments. One that worked, one missed opportunity with a concrete rewrite, and one where the client handed you something. Each with a “try again from here” button.
- One next rep. Not a syllabus. Just the next corner.
What you won’t get: a letter grade, a percent score, a streak to protect, or a leaderboard.
- Reflections : questions
- 2.3 : 1(last three: 1.1 : 1)improved
- Open questions
- 80%
- Complex reflections
- 3
- Advice-giving
- 0(last three: 2)improved
- Longest client turn
- 41s
Next rep "Silent client" — you're ready.
§ 06What SeatTime is not
A driving simulator, not a replacement.
We are not trying to replace your triads, your mock sessions, your faculty supervisor, or your practicum. The human encounter is the whole point of this work. SeatTime exists so you arrive at those moments past the fumbling stage.
Three things we won't do
01
Paste your real client data.
Every client is invented and reviewed. We don't want real material inside the tool.
02
Replace your supervisor.
Ten-minute reps beat long AI relationships. SeatTime is practice, not a substitute for the human encounter.
03
Use secret scoring.
The coach codes the way your CCS-R, MITI, or Counseling Skills Scale does. We publish the numbers so you know how it agrees with human raters.
§ 07Pricing
$15/month. Launch discount off $25. Unlimited reps through practicum.
One monthly plan. launch discount: $25 → $15. Cancel any time. Three clips are free forever after you create an account — no card.
Monthly
Launch discount$25$15/mo
All live clips · Unlimited text reps · Full coach on every rep · The pit wall. Cancel any time.
Start monthly — $15Card only when you start monthly. Or try a free rep first — no account.
§ 08Questions
Things people ask before their first rep.
Do I need an account to try it?
The first marketing demo runs without one. The three free clips in the product need an email account. No card for those. A card is only for the $15/month plan.
Is this an AI therapist?
No. It's a fictional client and a coach, built for people in training. It has no idea what to do with a real person in distress, and it says so.
Will my instructor see my reps?
Not unless you show them. Your transcripts are yours. You can export any rep as a PDF if you want to bring it to supervision.
What if the feedback is wrong?
We calibrate the coach against live counselor educators before launch and publish the agreement rates. When you disagree with feedback, every moment has a "this is off" button—we read every flag and it helps the coach improve.
Which programs is this for?
Master's counseling programs (CMHC, school, MFT, addiction, rehab), clinical MSW programs, and pre-licensed associates. Pick your program during onboarding and the labels change to match — "practicum" or "field placement," "client" throughout.
Does it do voice?
Text is the default because it's where experimentation happens — you can rewrite a line before you send it. A voice toggle for practicing pacing and silence ships later. We don't sell voice minutes as a plan.
Is my data used to train anything?
No. Transcripts are stored to power your own telemetry and can be deleted by you at any time.
What's the refund policy?
14-day money-back on the first paid month. Cancel any time from account settings; you keep access through the end of the period you already paid.
Does it map to the CCS-R?
Yes. We track the same Part I behaviors your instructor will rate: encouragers, questions, reflections of content and feeling, summarizing, reflection of meaning, confrontation, goal setting. You see the counts and trends before your CCS-R comes back.