Claude Profiles

Use a different Claude Code account in each VS Code window: work in one, personal in another, and a client's in a third. Let your accounts share a folder's history and memory, so when one hits its usage limit, another picks up the same conversation.

Get started in 3 steps

1. Open Claude Profiles from the Activity Bar. The account you already use appears as Main.
2. Add another account. Give it a name, and sign in in your browser.
3. Switch. Hover over an account and click Switch, then Switch and reload.

Each window keeps its own account, and other windows are unaffected.

The panel

• This window is highlighted, with a check on its avatar.
• After reload marks an account you've switched to but haven't reloaded for yet.
• The star marks the account new windows use. Change it from the ⋯ menu.
• Not set up and Not signed in accounts show a Sign in button. The panel notices when you've finished signing in.
• Existing ~/.claude-* folders appear under Found on this computer. Click Add to use one.
• The ⋯ menu (or right-click) has everything else: open a terminal for the account, reveal its folder, rename it, change its color, sign in to another account, sign out, change its folder, or remove it from the list. Removing can be undone.

Keyboard

Every action is also in the Command Palette under Claude Profiles.

Shared history

When several accounts work on the same folder, each normally keeps its own conversations and its own memory, so none of them knows what the others did. Shared history gives every account the same history for a folder.

• Memory: all accounts read and write one memory folder for the project, so what one account learns, the others know.
• Conversations: every account sees every conversation from this folder, so any account can resume any of them with /resume or from the Claude panel.

To turn it on, open the Shared history section in the panel (it suggests sharing once two accounts already have history here), or run Share History for This Folder…. Nothing is deleted. Each account's existing memory is merged into the shared folder. If two accounts have different versions of a memory file, both are kept, and Review opens them side by side.

Stop sharing (in the card's ⋯ menu) gives every account its own copy of the shared memory. Each account keeps the conversations it has. The shared folder is kept on disk.

On the card, Enter or Shift+F10 opens its actions, and Delete stops sharing (after you confirm).

How it works

• Memory: the extension sets Claude Code's autoMemoryDirectory in the folder's .claude/settings.local.json, pointing at a shared folder. Claude Code reads that setting for every account. The file is kept out of git (through .git/info/exclude, never your .gitignore).
• Conversations are copied between accounts while a window has the folder open: when it opens, when it regains focus, and shortly after a conversation changes. A copy only ever extends a conversation. A conversation that is still running is left alone until it stops. If two copies of a conversation ever differ, the longer one is kept and the other is backed up first. On disks that support it (such as APFS and Btrfs), copies take no extra space until they change.
• Conversations from the last 30 days are shared.
• The shared folder lives in ~/Library/Application Support/Claude Profiles on macOS, %LOCALAPPDATA%\Claude Profiles on Windows, and ~/.local/share/claude-profiles on Linux.

When an account hits its usage limit

The account shows Limited and when it resets, in the panel and in the status bar. In the window that was using it, Claude Profiles offers to Continue with another account that isn't limited. The window reloads under that account, and the same conversation opens in the Claude panel (or in a terminal, if the panel can't open it).

This works whether or not the folder's history is shared: if it isn't, that one conversation is copied to the other account first. If every account is limited, Remind me tells you when the first one resets.

You can also continue with another account at any time from an account's ⋯ menu or with Continue Conversation with Another Account…. Turn the offer off with the offerContinue setting.

Usage

Each signed-in Claude account shows how much of its usage limits it has used: 5h for the current session and 7d for the week. The bar fills as you use Claude, and a small tick marks how much of the session or week has passed.

• Fill before the tick: you have room. Fill past the tick: you're ahead of pace, and a line under the meters says when the limit would arrive at this rate (for example At this rate, 5h limit ~12:30 pm). Estimates assume you keep using Claude at your average rate so far.
• At 100% the account shows Limited with its reset time (unless extra usage is turned on for it), and Continue with suggests the account with the most room left. Only Claude actually stopping you brings up a notification.
• Click the meters, or choose Usage details from an account's ⋯ menu, for reset times, the pace and per-model weekly limits. Hovering shows the same in short.
• The status bar adds this window's figure (· 5h 82%) when it's at 80% or more, or ahead of pace.

Where the numbers come from. Claude Code checks each account's usage itself and saves the result in the account's folder (in .claude.json). Claude Profiles reads that saved result, and only when it belongs to the account that's signed in there. Claude Profiles never reads your sign-in or contacts Anthropic, and keeps no account details of its own.

How fresh they are. An account's numbers update whenever Claude Code checks its usage, which it does while you use that account. An account you haven't used for a while shows its last numbers as a minimum (≥48%) and says "Updates when you next use Work." Resets are known ahead of time, so a session that has reset shows 0% right away. Accounts that Claude Code hasn't checked yet, and Console (API) accounts, show no meters.

Turn the meters off with showUsage, and choose what the status bar shows with usageInStatusBar.

Personal settings across accounts

Share Personal Settings Across Accounts… (in the ⋯ menu at the top of the panel) gives your accounts one set of personal instructions (CLAUDE.md), agents, commands, skills and output styles. A backup is saved first. Each account's sign-in, settings.json, plugins and MCP servers stay its own. Stop Sharing Personal Settings… gives each account its own copy again.

Settings that belong to a project (its CLAUDE.md and .claude/ folder) are already shared by every account that opens it.

How switching works

Claude Code decides which account to use from the CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR environment variable. Main is Claude's standard setup, with no CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR. Every other profile is a folder of its own, such as ~/.claude-Work, with its own sign-in, settings and history.

When you switch a window to a profile, the extension:

1. Remembers the choice for that window, so reopening the folder brings it back.
2. Sets CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR for the Claude Code panel and new terminals in that window.
3. Reloads the window, if you choose Switch and reload. Claude sessions that are already open keep their old account until then.

The status bar shows this window's account in its color. It turns yellow when something needs attention, for example a reload or a sign-in.

Locked windows

If Claude Code's claudeCode.environmentVariables setting contains CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR, every window is locked to that account. The panel says so and offers Unlock and reload, which removes the setting. The account it pointed to becomes the one new windows use, so nothing changes until you switch.

Shell commands

On macOS and Linux, Add Shell Commands… (in the ⋯ menu at the top of the panel) adds a command per account to your shell startup file. For example, claude-work runs Claude with the Work account. A backup of the file is saved first. zsh, bash, sh and fish are supported.

Settings

Account colors can be adjusted per theme with workbench.colorCustomizations (for example "claudeProfiles.blue").

Troubleshooting

An account says "Not signed in", but I signed in before. Claude stores each sign-in under the exact folder path, so a differently spelled path (~/.claude-personal rather than ~/.claude-Personal) counts as a separate sign-in. Click Sign in.

The status bar shows a reload icon. You switched account, or settings changed in another window. Reload this window to apply it.

An account doesn't use the shared memory. Claude Code only reads .claude/settings.local.json in folders you've trusted. Open Claude in the folder with that account once and accept the trust prompt.

A conversation continued with another account shows an error. Some conversations can't move between organizations. Start a new conversation: the shared memory still carries what Claude learned, and the old conversation stays in the history.

Sign-in doesn't start. Signing in needs the Claude Code CLI (claude). The extension also looks for the copy bundled with the Claude Code extension.

Feedback

• Rate Claude Profiles… opens the extension's page on the Visual Studio Marketplace (or on Open VSX in Cursor, Windsurf, VSCodium and other editors), where you can leave a rating or review.
• Report a Problem… opens a new issue on GitHub with the extension, editor and OS versions filled in. You see everything before you send it.

Both are in the ⋯ menu at the top of the panel and in the Command Palette.

After you've used Claude Profiles for a while with more than one account, the panel may show a small card asking for a rating, at a quiet moment and never as a notification. It appears at most twice on a computer. Not now hides it for 60 days, and Don't ask again, rating, the askForRating setting or VS Code's telemetry.feedback.enabled setting hide it for good. Your answer follows you to other computers through Settings Sync.

Claude Profiles collects no telemetry. The rating card's counters stay on your machine.

Requirements

• VS Code 1.94 or later
• Claude Code (the VS Code extension, the CLI, or both)

License

Proprietary. Copyright © 2026 UniCorp, Inc. All rights reserved. See LICENSE.