Feature request: named profiles for multi-identity workflows (work + personal)

Status Closed — not planned
Maintainer reply None cached
Activity 3 comments · opened Apr 23, 2026 · closed May 28, 2026

Problem

Users who straddle work and personal accounts on one machine have no way to scope Claude Code actions to a specific identity. Everything — gh auth, MCP tokens, git config, settings — is globally shared across the session.

Concrete example: I needed to file a GitHub issue from my personal account (sreedeepnarayan) but my session is authenticated as my work account (sreedeepnarayan-atari). There's no way to do this without switching global gh auth, which disrupts all other work in the session.

Proposed solution

Named profiles, e.g.:

claude --profile personal
claude --profile work

Each profile would scope:

  • GitHub auth (gh identity)
  • MCP server tokens (separate OAuth sessions per profile)
  • Git user config (name/email)
  • Settings overrides (different CLAUDE.md, permissions, hooks)

Alternatives considered

  • gh auth switch per command — partial fix for GitHub only, doesn't cover MCP tokens or git identity
  • Separate macOS user accounts — too heavy, breaks workflow continuity
  • Cross-session clipboard/handoff — lighter version where one Claude session can export a task (issue body, PR description, etc.) for another session to pick up under a different identity

Use cases

  • Filing personal GitHub issues while working in a corporate repo
  • Keeping work Slack MCP tokens separate from personal workspace tokens
  • Contributing to open-source repos with a personal git identity mid-workday
  • Any dual-identity developer workflow

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