Portugal · Agentic software engineering

Software Development for Portugal with Agentic Engineering

When a team in Lisbon opens its laptops at 09:00, it is already 11:00 in Ankara in summer and 12:00 in winter. That gap is small, and it is the easy part. The harder questions for a company in Portugal bringing in engineers from outside the EU are how personal data may be reached from Türkiye, what the contract has to cover, and which Portuguese rules shape the system itself.

Curiosive is a software studio in Ankara, Türkiye. We build with the coding agents Claude Code and Cursor under senior engineer review, either delivering a product end to end or working as a long-term engineering partner on an existing roadmap. Agents do the volume: scaffolding, migrations, test coverage, wide refactors. Engineers own data models, auth, permissions and anything touching personal data.

Start a partnership From $2,000 per month

24: published portfolio projects
5+: years building for production
12: countries the work runs in
100%: of code read by a senior engineer
1 day: to hear back, from the engineer

Working hours between Portugal and Ankara, season by season

Ankara is on UTC+3 all year because Türkiye does not use daylight saving time, so the gap moves when Portugal changes its clocks. In winter, when mainland Portugal is on GMT+0, Ankara is three hours ahead: our 09:00 start is 06:00 in Lisbon, our 18:00 close is 15:00 in Lisbon, and a standard 09:00 to 18:00 day shares 6 hours, from 09:00 to 15:00 Lisbon time. In summer, on GMT+1, the gap is two hours: our day runs from 07:00 to 16:00 Lisbon time, with 7 shared hours from 09:00 to 16:00. Madeira keeps Lisbon time, while the Azores run one hour behind the mainland. In practice the first two or three hours of our day happen before a Lisbon morning begins, so reviewed changes and written notes are waiting when your team starts, the weekly call sits inside the shared hours, and decisions are written down rather than held in meetings.

Portugal implements the GDPR through Lei n.º 58/2019, and its Article 3 names the Comissão Nacional de Proteção de Dados (CNPD) as the supervisory authority. As of 2 October 2026, Türkiye is not on the European Commission's list of adequacy decisions, so EU personal data made available to a studio in Türkiye needs another Chapter V transfer tool, such as Standard Contractual Clauses. The EDPB's Guidelines 05/2021 treat remote access from a third country as a transfer even when data is only displayed on a screen for support or troubleshooting. The clauses in Decision (EU) 2021/914 include a controller to processor module, and under Clause 14 both parties warrant they have no reason to believe the destination's laws prevent compliance. The simplest way to limit the transfer is to keep production personal data out of development and to agree in writing who may access production, and why.

Contracting, invoicing and Portuguese platform rules

A company in Portugal contracts with us cross-border, on scope and capacity agreed in writing after a discovery call, with no long contract to begin. Our pricing is in US dollars while Portugal's currency is the euro, so the invoicing currency is something to settle in that written scope. The code is yours from the first commit, with the repository, database and hosting opened in your company's name. Two Portuguese rules can shape the build itself. Lei n.º 12-A/2026 implements the EU Digital Services Act, with the CNPD, ANACOM and ERC as competent authorities; they met on 14 July 2026 to coordinate enforcement. If the product should offer login or signatures with the Cartão de Cidadão or Chave Móvel Digital through Autenticação.gov, integration must be agreed by protocol with ARTE (Agência para a Reforma Tecnológica do Estado), a dependency outside the codebase that belongs early in the plan.

How agents and senior review split the engineering work

Each piece of work starts with an engineer writing a scoped task: acceptance criteria, plus the boundaries the agent must not cross. The agent reads the existing code, plans, implements, updates tests and runs the type checker, linter and test suite before proposing a change. A senior engineer reviews every diff, agents never merge their own work, and continuous integration re-runs the checks. This lowers the cost of volume, not the cost of judgement: auth, payment paths and personal data still get a person's full attention. The same discipline carried larger systems for clients outside Portugal, including the Webflow to Next.js rebuild of Zing Coach (zing.coach), the revival of RateItAll (rateitall.com) with 12M+ reviews, and the Detailed SEO Extension, used by 600,000 SEOs and maintained through its acquisition by Ahrefs.

Proof

Published project examples

design.computer

Release Coach AI

Inspire Film

Reveal Software

Poppin

Zing Coach

AI-accelerated development

from$2,000

per month

Senior engineers building your product with AI coding agents: web, mobile, SaaS or browser extension, reviewed before anything ships.

Web, mobile, SaaS and browser extensions
AI-assisted delivery under senior engineer review
Scope and capacity agreed in writing, renews monthly

AI-accelerated development, billed monthly. We confirm scope, capacity and start date in writing before checkout.

Questions

The things people ask before starting.

Can a company in Portugal outsource software development to Türkiye under the GDPR?

Yes, with a transfer tool in place. Türkiye has no EU adequacy decision as of 2 October 2026, and remote access counts as a transfer, so the contract needs safeguards such as the Standard Contractual Clauses of Decision (EU) 2021/914. Exact wording of the clauses is worth confirming with a lawyer.

How many working hours overlap between Lisbon and Ankara?

Seven hours in summer and six in winter, in a standard 09:00 to 18:00 day. Ankara is two hours ahead of mainland Portugal in summer and three in winter, so our working day runs from 07:00 to 16:00 Lisbon time in summer and from 06:00 to 15:00 in winter.

What does software development cost for a team in Portugal?

It starts from $2,000 per month for AI-accelerated development, our single offer, quoted in US dollars. The scope and capacity behind that figure are agreed in writing after a discovery call, whether the work is a product built end to end or ongoing releases, fixes and roadmap work.

Who owns the code if a Portuguese company stops working with Curiosive?

You do, from the first commit. Repository, database and hosting accounts are opened in your company's name or connected to accounts you already hold. The code is typed, tested and documented, with no lock-in to our tooling, so another team can pick it up.

Does Portugal's Digital Services Act law affect a platform we are building?

It may, depending on what kind of service the platform provides. Lei n.º 12-A/2026, of 15 April, implements the EU Digital Services Act in Portugal, and the CNPD, ANACOM and ERC are its competent authorities. Discovery, where constraints are mapped, is the point to work out which features could bring the product into scope.

Solutions

Locations

What happens after you write to us.

01
You describe the product
One paragraph on what you are building, roughly when you need it, and who it is for. No brief, no form with fifteen fields.
02
You get a reply within a day
From the engineer who would do the work, not a sales team. If we are not the right fit we say so, and where possible we point you somewhere better.
03
You get a scoped plan
Scope, price and timeline in writing before anything is committed. You decide with the numbers in front of you.

No long contract to begin, no lock-in to our tooling, and the code is yours from the first commit.

Start a conversation

Contact

Looking for an engineering partner for the long haul?

A short note about the product, the timeline and who it is for is enough to start. You will hear back from the engineer who would do the work, not a sales team.

hello@curiosive.com See what we have shipped

Ankara / Türkiye · Working across European and US time zones

Software Development for Portugal with Agentic Engineering

Working hours between Portugal and Ankara, season by season

Contracting, invoicing and Portuguese platform rules

How agents and senior review split the engineering work