a show — first on instagram
Clandestine Hours
Tech in Portugal, past the press releases: what's actually being built, by whom, and whether it's working. With detours into philosophy and science — and, every so often, an episode from inside our own studio.
real talk · startups to operators · portugal rooted · behind the surface
# episodes 30 min – 1 h · portugal first
where it starts
season one — in production · first on instagram
It starts on Instagram — notes, opinions, and short conversations on what's happening in tech in Portugal, while season one takes shape. The full episodes land on Spotify & YouTube: long conversations with the founders, operators and engineers building it — what they bet on, what broke, and what they'd do differently.
# no dates promised — it ships when it’s worth your time.
# episode 001 when it lands — then the occasional dispatch. leave whenever.
boutique venture studio · lisbon · after hours
We are our own first client.
We build our own products first — the mistakes happen there, on our own time and our own money. By the time we build for you, or teach, it’s practice, not theory.
Most software shouldn't outlive the problem it solved. We build to fit — the real problem, the size it needs — so when something better comes, you're free to move on, not trapped maintaining what you've outgrown.
# clandestine hours, n. — the quiet, unclaimed ones, when the work that matters actually gets done.
# each one funds the next. the lab is the centre of gravity.
products & tools
- 01 Commonplace Your ideas deserve an audience. live
- 02 Nappy Notes Parenting is hard. Tracking shouldn't be. maintenance
- 03 Book Time Tools for book lovers. live
- 04 fmaps Codebase cartography for AI teams. building
- 05 doctrine Product memory for AI coding harnesses. building
- 06 memory-ledger Persistent memory for AI agents. building
partnerships
- 07 Factory & Stock Suite Desktop and web, shaped to how they actually work. live
- 08 Agentic Delivery An enterprise integrator's pipeline, accelerated by agents. live
- 09 Architecture Desk Solution architecture as a service for a product agency. live
# the recent slice of a team that's been shipping serious software since at least 2016
partner with us
availability: 1–2 / quarter · currently full · next slot Q4
Software shops tend to optimise for the billables and what was agreed — and lose sight of the actual problem. We anchor on the problem: scope is written around what done means for you, and we flag drift early, before it becomes a surprise.
Fixed scope, project-priced, handed back running. You keep the source, the infrastructure, and the freedom to never call us again. Most people still do.
backing
For the rare fit, we go deeper: an angel-size cheque, or our hours for a share — fractional work or advisory, around the product work. A few a year, no more.
lately
- 2026 doctrine: Agents Shouldn't Start Cold A memory layer so agents don't start cold — what's being built, what was decided, what the team learned. Opinionated and simple, with a dashboard to follow it.
- 2026 fmaps: Built Because We Needed It Agents were making confident, breaking changes to files they had no business touching. We built the map so they'd know the territory before acting.
- 2026 [ NDA ] Some engagements stay off the record.
start a brief
The clearest briefs get the sharpest answers. Tell us the real problem, who has it, and what done looks like in ninety days — a few honest paragraphs beat a polished deck.
# not sure how to frame it? pipe it through a model — opens with the brief already loaded:
# rather see it built? hand the brief to a builder — opens with it as the prompt:
sessions · talks · workshops
Fundamentals, not hype.
Software is changing faster than job titles can keep up. That’s exactly why the fundamentals matter more, not less: as the models take the keystrokes, the engineer becomes the architect — judgment, structure, knowing what good looks like. We teach what this moment actually means — agentic systems, models as collaborators, the new shape of the job — to the people doing the work, not their management.
formats
- private team session Hands-on, on your stack and your codebase, around your team's real questions. half or full day
- public talk What this moment means for how software gets built — plus the Q&A that matters. 45–60 min
- workshop series From first agent to working pipeline — 3–5 sessions with homework between them. 4–8 weeks
# taught from production scar tissue, not slideware. adapted to where your team actually is.