Accounts

A Claude contact answers in your Claude login, the same one as claude in your terminal. You can add more accounts, such as a personal one beside your work one. When the account in use reaches its session or weekly limit, a conversation can go on in the next one.

Adding an account

Tools > Settings... > Accounts lists your accounts. Your own login is always first: it is the one your terminal uses.

1. Pick how to sign in, if there is a choice, and press Add account....
2. Your browser opens on Claude's sign-in page. Sign in with the other account there. If the page shows an account you have here already, switch accounts in the browser first.
3. The account is listed with its email address once you are back.

An account you have already is not added twice. Remove signs an added account out and forgets it. Your own login can't be removed here: it stays signed in for your terminal.

Switching

Use on the Accounts page, or Switch account... under the usage meter at the end of a conversation's status bar, puts another account in use. That holds for every Claude contact. Each conversation moves to it with its next message, or right away when the meter asks it how full it is. A conversation in the middle of a turn finishes that turn first.

The usage meter says which account its limits are of.

When a limit is reached

When Claude Code turns your message away because the account in use reached a limit, the conversation shows Claude Code's own message, and then an invitation:

Claude would like to switch to me@example.com. work@example.com reached its weekly limit. Resets Wed 2:00 AM. Your message is sent again from there.

• Accept (⌥C) puts the next account in use and sends your message again from it. The conversation picks up where it was, with everything said so far.
• Always allow does the same, and from then on the app switches without asking. A line in the conversation still says so. Switch without asking on the Accounts page turns that on and off.
• Decline (⌥D) stays in the account you were in.

The next account is the one after the one in use, then round from the top. A message that every account turned away is not sent round again: the conversation says that every one of your accounts has reached a limit. A new message of your own tries again.

Good to know:

• Switching starts Claude Code again in the other account. A helper still at work and what Claude set itself to check back on end with it. The first reply after a switch can take a little longer.
• An account added here shares everything you set up for Claude Code: your settings, CLAUDE.md, skills, agents, commands, hooks, output styles and plugins. It shares the conversations too, which is how one is picked up in another account.
• What your organization sets for an account, its policies and managed settings, stays with that account.
• The MCP servers you added for yourself are copied to an account when it is added. One you add later, add with claude mcp add in that account too, or add it to the project instead.

Continuing with another provider

When an agent reports a usage limit, Invite another agent in the conversation opens the invitation picker. Choose an agent from another provider, such as Codex alongside Claude. It joins the same folder and gets a recap of the conversation on its first turn; its own login and usage limits apply. Nothing switches providers automatically.

If the stopped agent has unfinished to-dos, use Continue with... on its checklist after inviting the other agent. Choose who should receive the remaining items, including any that were in progress. The new agent is asked to inspect existing changes and verify what is already complete. See Conversations and Group conversations.

Where they are kept

Each account added here gets a folder of its own under the app's data, in accounts/claude/. Claude Code is started with that folder as its CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR, so it keeps the login apart: on a Mac in a keychain entry of its own. The folder links to what it shares in your own ~/.claude, and removing the account removes only those links.

claude in a terminal goes on using your own login. To use an added account there, set CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR to its folder under the app's data folder. For example, on a Mac:

CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR="$HOME/Library/Application Support/buddylist/accounts/claude/<id>" claude