Parallel Claude Accounts

Run Claude terminals on different accounts at the same time — each saved account signs in to its own config home, with the account on every tab and quota that follows the terminal.

Every saved Claude account can have its own login, so Claude terminals on different accounts run side by side. For example, your Team seat can run in one pane and your personal plan in the next. Nothing swaps the machine-wide login underneath running work, and the quota readout follows the terminal you are looking at.

Three Claude terminals where one carries a team-account badge on its tab and pane header, beside Spend & Quota Center's Accounts tab showing team-account tagged parallel with its own 5-hour and weekly limits

Parallel accounts are for Claude Code 2.1.270 or newer. Older versions don't keep logins separate, and 1DevTool asks you to update before adding one. Other agents still switch one login at a time. See AI Spend & Quota Center.

How it works

Each account lives in its own config home under ~/.1devtool/ai-pool/claude/homes/, and Claude is launched with CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR pointing at it. Every home stores its own credential. On macOS that is a separate Keychain entry, and on Linux and Windows it is the home's own credentials file.

Your history, projects, skills, plugins, settings.json and CLAUDE.md are linked back to your usual ~/.claude. Resuming a session and your settings therefore work the same on every account.

The login your computer already has stays untouched. It is listed as This Mac's Claude login with a System tag, and terminals on it launch exactly as before.

Add an account

  1. Open Settings → Agents → Accounts.
  2. Click Add account. A terminal named Claude sign-in opens and runs claude auth login in a fresh config home.
  3. Finish the sign-in in your browser. The account appears in the list, named after the part of your email before the @.

You can't add the account your computer is already signed in with. It is already the system account.

Pick the account for a terminal

Once at least one parallel account exists:

  • New Terminal shows an Account: field when Claude is the agent. Choose This Mac's login or any saved account.
  • The terminal's tab and pane header show the account name as a badge. Hover it to see Account: ….
  • Default for new Claude terminals in Settings → Agents → Accounts sets which account new Claude terminals start on.

Each account row in Settings also has New terminal, which opens a terminal already on that account. Copy cmd copies the command that starts claude on that account from any shell.

Quota per account

  • The quota pill and quota alerts report the account the focused terminal is on.
  • Each account's five-hour and seven-day limits are read from Claude's own status line, so fresh numbers need no extra sign-ins. This works on macOS and Linux.
  • Spend & Quota Center → Accounts shows every account's limits, a parallel or legacy tag, and a New terminal button.

When a quota alert names a spare account with room, it offers Relaunch on that account. The focused terminal is stopped, started again on the other account, and its session is resumed. New terminal on that account opens a fresh terminal instead.

Keep accounts healthy

  • Re-login opens a sign-in terminal on the same config home. Use it when a token has expired. The account keeps its label and quota history.
  • Rename an account by hovering its name in Spend & Quota Center and clicking the pencil. The new name shows on its terminals.
  • Wrong account warning. If a terminal comes up on a different login than the one it was assigned, you get an attention item: This terminal is running as a different Claude account than assigned. Close and relaunch it on the account to fix billing/quota attribution.

Accounts saved before v1.74.1

Accounts saved earlier keep working the old way, one live login at a time, and are tagged Legacy. Click Re-login to run in parallel on one to move it into its own config home. The older global switch is still available under Advanced: legacy global switch….

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