Per-project accounts

Put a .claude-profile file containing a profile name anywhere in a project tree. The nearest one wins, walking up from the current directory.

echo work > ~/Projects/Acme/.claude-profile

Now cd anywhere under ~/Projects/Acme selects the work profile automatically:

cd ~/Projects/Acme/api
claude-profile

claude profile: work
config dir    : ~/.claude-profiles/work

Directories with no marker fall back to default.

One marker, many repos

Because the walk goes upward, a single marker above a group of repos covers all of them:

~/Projects/Acme/
  .claude-profile        <- contains "work"
  api/                   -> work
  web/                   -> work
  infra/                 -> work

Placing it above the repos also means it does not need to be committed or gitignored.

Overriding for one repo

A marker deeper in the tree wins over one higher up:

~/Projects/Acme/
  .claude-profile        <- "work"
  api/
  experiment/
    .claude-profile      <- "personal", wins inside experiment/

How it works

A shell hook (chpwd in zsh, PROMPT_COMMAND in bash) walks up from the current directory looking for the file and switches to the name inside it.

It is plain shell with an early-exit guard when the directory has not changed, so it costs nothing per prompt. It deliberately does not shell out to Python, which would add noticeable latency to every cd.

Already-running sessions are unaffected

CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR is read when claude launches. Switching profiles does not change a session that is already open - restart it.

Troubleshooting

cat ~/Projects/Acme/.claude-profile   # should contain just the profile name
claude-profile                        # what is active right now?

Trailing whitespace is stripped, but the name must match a directory under ~/.claude-profiles exactly - it is case-sensitive.