https://github.com/countzero/windows_switch_claude_account
A simple PowerShell script to switch between multiple Anthropic Claude accounts.
https://github.com/countzero/windows_switch_claude_account
Last synced: 16 days ago
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A simple PowerShell script to switch between multiple Anthropic Claude accounts.
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/countzero/windows_switch_claude_account
- Owner: countzero
- Created: 2026-04-23T10:12:24.000Z (27 days ago)
- Default Branch: main
- Last Pushed: 2026-04-26T21:05:46.000Z (23 days ago)
- Last Synced: 2026-04-26T23:03:46.042Z (23 days ago)
- Language: PowerShell
- Size: 611 KB
- Stars: 0
- Watchers: 0
- Forks: 0
- Open Issues: 0
-
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
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README
# Claude Account Switcher
A zero-dependency PowerShell tool for managing multiple Claude Code accounts on Windows. Save, switch, and watch live plan usage across all your slots; single self-contained `.ps1`, no companion files.
## Features
- **Live plan-usage dashboard**: `sca usage -Watch` polls Anthropic's `/api/oauth/usage` and renders a flicker-free, auto-refreshing view of Session (5h) and Week (7d) limits across every slot; the terminal-tab title is updated each poll so a backgrounded watch is glanceable from the taskbar / Alt-Tab
- **Identity-aware slots**: each slot's OAuth email is captured at save time, baked into the filename, and locked in a sidecar; what you see in `list` is guaranteed to be who the tokens actually belong to
- **Auto-reconcile**: silently captures Claude Code's hourly token refreshes into the tracked slot; auto-saves cross-account swaps under a timestamped name so you never lose state
- **Transparent token refresh**: expired access tokens are refreshed before usage queries and mirrored back into the active credentials file
- **Atomic-safe writes**: slot-file updates survive a running Claude Code via `MoveFileEx` with retry; `save` / `switch` still refuse to run while it's open (single source of truth on `~/.claude.json`)
- **Named slots with rotation**: unlimited accounts under any name (Windows-invalid characters auto-sanitized); `sca switch` with no name cycles through them alphabetically
- **Zero dependencies**: pure PowerShell 7.2+, no external packages, no companion assets
## What `sca usage -Watch` looks like
```
[Usage] Plan usage
Session [█████████████ ] 22%
Week [██████████████████████████████████████ ] 62%
Slot Account Session Week Status
----------- --------------------- ------------- ----------- ------
* work alex@acme.io 18% (2h 11m) 42% (102h) ok
personal alex.dev@gmail.com 3% (4h 02m) 7% (146h) ok
dev alex@startup.dev 9% (3h 41m) 34% (118h) ok
client-acme ada.lovelace@arpa.net 71% (1h 04m) 92% (41h) near limit
legacy team@example.com 12% (3h 18m) 100% (12h) limited 7d
[Watch] Last poll: 14:32:07
```
The terminal-tab title is updated on every poll so the watch is useful even when the window is in the background:
22% | 62% | Switch Claude Account
The numbers come from the **active** slot (or the slot named in `sca usage -Watch`); a non-`ok` row falls back to the bare brand suffix. A `[~]` prefix appears when a bucket is ≥90%, `[!]` when ≥100%. Pre-watch title is restored on Ctrl-C.
> Bar color: green <50%, yellow ≥50%, red ≥90%. Row color tracks slot status: green for the active+`ok` slot (including the `*` marker), gray for healthy inactive slots, yellow for `near limit` (≥90%), red for `limited 5h` / `limited 7d` (≥100%).
## Installation
> **Requires PowerShell 7.2+.** Stock Windows ships PowerShell 5.1, which is not supported. Install PS 7 via `winget install Microsoft.PowerShell`, then run from `pwsh`.
### Download
[Download `switch_claude_account.ps1`](https://github.com/countzero/windows_switch_claude_account/releases/latest/download/switch_claude_account.ps1)
(latest release; single self-contained file, no companion assets).
Place it anywhere on disk.
For older versions or release notes, see the
[releases page](https://github.com/countzero/windows_switch_claude_account/releases).
### Manual (run once)
```powershell
.\switch_claude_account.ps1 install
```
This adds `sca` (short) and `switch-claude-account` (long) aliases to your PowerShell profile. Close and reopen your terminal to activate them.
### Without alias
```powershell
.\switch_claude_account.ps1 [name]
```
## Usage
### Save an account
Log into an account in Claude Code, **close Claude Code**, then save:
```powershell
sca save work
sca save personal
sca save test-project
```
`save` refuses to run while Claude Code is open and refuses to save a slot whose identity it cannot resolve from `~/.claude.json` (primary) or `/api/oauth/profile` (fallback). There are no unlabeled-no-identity slots. To rename a slot: `sca switch old-name; sca save new-name; sca remove old-name`.
### List saved slots
```powershell
sca list
```
The active slot is marked with `*` (sourced from `~/.claude/.sca-state.json`). Slots whose identity sidecar is missing or invalid are hidden from the list, from rotation, and from `switch`; re-running `sca save ` while that slot is active recaptures the sidecar.
### Switch to a slot
```powershell
sca switch work
```
`switch` refuses to run while Claude Code is open. It atomically writes the slot's bytes into `.credentials.json` AND restores the slot's captured `oauthAccount` block into `~/.claude.json` so Claude Code's `/status` shows the matching email.
### Rotate to the next slot
```powershell
sca switch
```
Without a name, `switch` activates the next slot in alphabetical order and wraps from the last back to the first. The current position comes from `state.active_slot`.
### Remove a slot
```powershell
sca remove test-project
```
`remove` refuses to delete the slot tracked as currently active.
### Identity capture: who is each slot actually logged in as?
Slot names are user-assigned labels; nothing stops you from naming a slot `work` and later overwriting it with credentials for a completely different account. At `sca save` time the tool pulls the OAuth email from `~/.claude.json`'s `oauthAccount` block (Claude Code's own cache) and embeds it in the slot filename:
```
%USERPROFILE%\.claude\.credentials.work(ada.lovelace@arpa.net).json
```
A paired sidecar `.credentials.work(ada.lovelace@arpa.net).account.json` holds the full whitelisted identity (`accountUuid`, `emailAddress`, `organizationUuid`, `displayName`, `organizationName`) so `sca switch` can restore the matching `oauthAccount` block to `~/.claude.json`. Because the email is captured at save time and carried in both the filename and sidecar, it cannot drift from the OAuth tokens; the only way to update a slot's email label is to re-run `sca save`.
When the slot name already equals the OAuth email, the filename is deduplicated to `.credentials.alice@example.com.json` and the `Account` column shows `—`.
### Check plan usage
```powershell
sca usage # one-shot table for every slot
sca usage work # verbose single-slot block (opus / sonnet / overage)
sca usage -Watch # live, self-refreshing view; Ctrl-C to quit
sca usage -Watch -Interval 300 # slower poll cadence (60s floor)
sca usage -Json # machine-readable per-slot output
sca usage -NoColor # strip ANSI color (also: $env:NO_COLOR='1')
```
`-NoColor` works under `-Watch` too; body color is stripped while the alt-buffer / synchronized-output rendering remains flicker-free. The output shows the 5-hour session limit (`Session` column, "Current session" in Claude Code's `/usage`) and the 7-day weekly all-models limit (`Week` column, "Current week (all models)") as percentages of each account's Claude.ai subscription:
```
[Usage] Plan usage
Session [█████ ] 10%
Week [████████████ ] 24%
Slot Account Session Week Status
-------- ------------------ ------------- ----------- ------
* work alex@acme.io 18% (2h 11m) 42% (102h) ok
personal alex.dev@gmail.com 3% (4h 02m) 7% (146h) ok
```
Decoding the output:
- **Pool-aggregate bars**: sum utilization across HTTP-ok slots over `N × 100%`. Bar color: green <50%, yellow ≥50%, red ≥90%.
- **Active marker (`*`)**: sourced from `~/.claude/.sca-state.json`; appears at the start of the row and inherits the row's color.
- **`Account` column**: the OAuth email captured at save time. Shows `—` when the email equals the slot name (deduped filename), the actual email otherwise.
- **`Session` / `Week` cells**: `% `. The delta is `(2h 11m)` under 24h with minute precision, `(102h)` at 24h+ with integer hours, `now` if the reset is past, or `—` when no data is available.
- **`Status` column**: one of `ok`, `near limit` (≥90%), `limited 5h` / `limited 7d` (≥100%), `error`, `expired`, `unauthorized`, `rate-limited`, or `no-oauth`. Status drives the entire row's color.
Drill into a single slot for absolute reset times in your local timezone:
```powershell
sca usage work
```
```
[Usage] Slot 'work' (active)
Account: alex@acme.io
Status: ok
Session 18% Resets 7:50pm Europe/Berlin
Week 42% Resets Apr 28, 9am Europe/Berlin
```
`list`, `switch`, and `usage` run a quiet **reconcile** pass before doing their work: if `.credentials.json` has changed since the last sync (Claude Code refreshed a token, or you logged into a different account inside Claude Code), the new bytes are captured into the tracked slot, or auto-saved under `auto-().json` if the email differs.
> **Unofficial API.** `sca usage` calls `api.anthropic.com/api/oauth/usage`, the same endpoint Claude Code's `/usage` uses internally. Undocumented by Anthropic and may break on Claude Code upgrades; when that happens, see the extraction recipe at the top of `switch_claude_account.ps1` to re-pin the constants.
> **Token refresh.** If a slot's access token has expired (default TTL ~1h), `sca usage` transparently refreshes it against `platform.claude.com/v1/oauth/token` and mirrors the new tokens back into both the slot file and `.credentials.json` via atomic rename so the active session keeps working.
### Install / uninstall alias
```powershell
sca install # Add aliases to your PowerShell profile
sca uninstall # Remove aliases from your PowerShell profile
sca help # Show usage info
```
## Workflow
### Saving accounts
1. Open Claude Code and log in with your first account
2. **Close Claude Code**
3. Run `sca save work`
4. Open Claude Code, log out, log in with a different account
5. **Close Claude Code**
6. Run `sca save personal`
If Claude Code is running when you invoke `save` or `switch`, the action exits immediately with a clear message; no partial writes occur.
### Switching between accounts
1. **Close Claude Code**
2. Run `sca switch work`
3. Open Claude Code: it now uses the `work` credentials and `/status` shows the matching email
### Why close Claude Code first?
`sca save` and `sca switch` read and write `~/.claude.json`'s `oauthAccount` block. Claude Code keeps that block in an in-memory cache that may flush back and clobber the update. Closing the app eliminates the race. (Slot-file updates done by `sca usage`'s token refresh use `MoveFileEx` with retry, so they survive an open Claude Code on `.credentials.json` itself; but the `~/.claude.json` cache race means you still need to close it for the two write actions.)
## Windows Notes
### Name sanitization
Spaces, Windows-invalid filename characters (`\ / : * ? " < > |` and control chars), and PowerShell wildcard brackets (`[` `]`) are automatically replaced with `_`. Trailing dots are stripped. Reserved Windows device names (`CON`, `PRN`, `AUX`, `NUL`, `COM1`-`COM9`, `LPT1`-`LPT9`) are rejected.
- `my personal` → `my_personal`
- `foo/bar` → `foo_bar`
- `foo[bar]` → `foo_bar_`
- `foo.` → `foo`
- `CON` → error (reserved device name)
### Profile encoding
`sca install` and `sca uninstall` preserve your PowerShell profile's existing encoding (UTF-8 with or without BOM, UTF-16 LE/BE). ANSI-encoded profiles are treated as UTF-8 no-BOM (indistinguishable without a BOM).
### State file
The active-slot tracker lives at `%USERPROFILE%\.claude\.sca-state.json`; plain JSON, safe to inspect. Schema: `{ schema, active_slot, last_sync_hash }`.
### Execution policy
If you get a security warning on first run, press `Y` or run once as:
```powershell
Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser RemoteSigned
```
## Testing
```powershell
pwsh -NoProfile -File tests/Invoke-Tests.ps1
```
Pester 5 is auto-installed to `CurrentUser` scope on first use. PSScriptAnalyzer runs in advisory mode if installed. Each test sandboxes `$env:USERPROFILE` and `$PROFILE.CurrentUserAllHosts` to Pester's `$TestDrive` so your real `.claude\` directory and PowerShell profile are never touched. Exit code follows Pester: `0` on pass, non-zero on any failure.
---
For the architecture (state file, sidecar invariants, `~/.claude.json` ownership, unofficial API constants), see [`CLAUDE.md`](./CLAUDE.md).