How it works

For the curious. You do not need any of this to use it.

Accounts are config dirs

Claude Code keeps its login and settings in a config dir, ~/.claude by default, and uses another one when CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR points to it. The login belongs to that dir (on macOS, the Keychain entry is keyed to it), so each dir is an independent account, and all of them stay logged in at once.

• A profile is a name for a config dir: its own login, or another name for an existing profile's login (--same-as).
• The login already in ~/.claude becomes a profile as it is; nothing moves. That profile runs with CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR unset, exactly as before.
• New profiles live in ~/.local/share/claude-account/profiles/<name>. They share your settings, skills, agents, commands, hooks, plugins, memory and conversation history with ~/.claude through symlinks; only the login is separate. That is why claude --continue can resume a conversation under another account.
• The shell integration (a marked block in your rc file) defines a claude function. It finds the profile for the current folder and runs the real claude with that profile's config dir.

Which account applies

The nearest mapped folder wins, so a folder inherits its parent's account and can override it:

csw use work ~/work                    # everything under ~/work
csw use personal ~/work/side-project   # except this folder

A folder resolves the same way however you reach it: through symlinks, in any letter case on case-insensitive disks, and from git worktrees that live outside their repository (they follow their repository). The exact rules are in the reference.

A .claude-account file containing a profile name pins a folder too, and can be committed (csw use <profile> --local). The machine mapping wins over a file in the same folder, and a file naming a profile you do not have is ignored with a warning.

The installer

curl -fsSL https://switcher.diananerd.com | sh runs install.sh from the repository's main branch.

• It shows what it found (system, Claude Code, any installed copy, shell, PATH) and checks every dependency before changing anything.
• Nothing changes until the download matches its SHA-256 and runs. Every error says what happened, what to do, and whether anything changed.
• Running it again is safe: it upgrades, reinstalls, downgrades on request, or finishes an interrupted install, and leaves the same files every time.
• Options, after sh -s --: -y for no questions, --version TAG, --bin-dir DIR, --no-modify-rc, --alias NAME or --no-alias for the short command, --uninstall [--purge]. See sh -s -- --help.

Building from source

With Rust 1.88 or newer:

cargo install --locked --tag vX.Y.Z \
  --git https://github.com/diananerd/claude-account-switcher
claude-account shell install && claude-account setup

A build installed this way has no csw; add one with ln -s claude-account ~/.cargo/bin/csw, or use the full name.