cc-profiles

Concepts

Profiles

A profile is a folder Claude Code uses for its configuration: ~/.claude by default, or whatever CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR points to. Each profile has its own:

• memory (general and per project)
• conversations, resumable with /resume
• prompt history (arrow up)
• settings, permissions, hooks, CLAUDE.md
• skills, plugins, subagents, slash commands, unless they are shared
• login

Profiles are a good way to keep separate contexts on one machine: work and personal, or one profile per client. Claude.ai connectors and usage limits belong to the account, not the profile, so two profiles logged into the same account share them.

The source profile

The first profile in config.json is the source profile. Other profiles share items from it (see below). It cannot be deleted, and its command is always claude.

Projects

Claude Code stores what belongs to a project in a folder under projects/, named after the project’s absolute path with every non-alphanumeric character replaced by -. For example, /Users/you/code/api becomes -Users-you-code-api.

Because of this:

• Moving or renaming a project folder detaches its history. Claude Code looks for the new name and finds nothing. cc-profiles detects this (orphan projects) and can relink it.
• The name cannot always be turned back into a path. - may stand for /, a space, a dot or +. cc-profiles recovers the real path from config files, the prompt history and the conversations themselves, and as a last resort by walking the disk.

A project “lives” in a profile when that profile has its conversations or memories. The same project can appear in several profiles.

Rules

Rules say which profile a project belongs to. Each rule matches text in the project’s path:

{ "match": "code/work", "profile": "work" }

• The first matching rule wins; rules created from the UI are added at the top.
• { "exact": "~", "profile": "shared" } matches one exact path.
• "profile": "shared" means “it is normal to find this in every profile”, like your home folder or temporary folders.
• A project with no matching rule shows up as not assigned to a profile.

When a project belongs to one profile but has content in another, the Projects tab offers Move to ….

Sharing

A profile can share an item with the source profile: skills, plugins, agents, commands, CLAUDE.md or settings.json. Sharing replaces the item with a relative symlink (for example ~/.claude-work/skills → ../.claude/skills), so you install or edit once and every sharing profile sees it.

Notes:

• Writing a shared file (from the Settings tab, for example) writes the source file and keeps the link intact.
• Plugin files are shared, but which plugins are enabled lives in settings.json. Share settings.json as well if you want the same plugins enabled everywhere.
• Unsharing gives the profile its own independent copy.

Backups

Every operation that changes files creates a backup: a folder in ~/.cc-profiles/backups/ with the original files and a journal of every step (copied, moved, created…). Restore replays the journal backwards and puts everything back. A restore is itself an operation with its own backup, so it can be undone too.

Nothing is ever deleted outright. “Delete” moves things into the backup, and only deleting a backup really erases data. See Backups.

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