How-to

Separate work and personal

One Claude Code profile for everything mixes your contexts: work memories show up in personal projects, the work CLAUDE.md applies to your side projects, and one account’s limits cover both. This guide gives work its own profile in about five minutes, and makes claude pick the right one by itself.

The example assumes your work code is under ~/code/work and the rest under ~/code/personal. Use your own folders.

1. Create the Work profile

In the Profiles tab, click New profile:

• Name: Work. Id: work, which gives the folder ~/.claude-work and the command claude-work.
• Base: Copy of Default to start with your current settings, skills and MCP servers, or Empty for a clean slate. Leave conversations unticked: the next steps move the work ones.
• Share with the source profile: keep skills and plugins ticked if you want the same ones in both profiles.

See Profiles and sharing for every option.

2. Log in

Login credentials are never copied, so the new profile signs in once:

claude-work

Then type /login and choose your work account. If claude-work is not found, ~/.local/bin is missing from your PATH: see Getting started.

3. Tell cc-profiles which projects are work

In the Projects tab, find a project under ~/code/work, click Assign… and enter code/work → Work. Every current and future project whose path contains code/work now belongs to Work. Add code/personal → Default the same way if you like the list tidy.

4. Move the work projects

The work projects still have their conversations and memories in Default, so the tab lists them under Needs attention with Move to Work. Click it on each one. Before confirming, Show the files and folders it touches lists everything that moves: conversations, memories, file snapshots, prompts and per-project settings.

Close the Claude Code sessions open in those projects first: a running session could write the old settings back. See Move a project to another profile for details.

5. Let claude pick the profile

In the Profiles tab, turn on Profile by folder. From the next terminal, claude in ~/code/work/api starts the Work profile, and anywhere else the default one. Check it without starting Claude Code:

cc-profiles which ~/code/work/api        # Work
cc-profiles which ~/code/personal/blog   # Default, or nothing when no rule matches

See Profile by folder.

6. Tidy the general memories

Memories of your home project load in every session. Open the Memories tab, pick Default and your home project, and move the work-only ones to the home project of Work with Move….

Everything above is in the Backups tab: each step can be restored on its own.

Something wrong, unclear or missing on this page? Open an issue on GitHub