Dueling Claudes

It’s common to need to use two instances of the same software, especially when you have work and personal accounts.

Work version has access to work accounts and data, personal version has access to personal accounts and data. You don’t want to cross the streams. Bad shit can happen, human strife, cats and dogs sleeping together, mass hysteria.

I wanted to use Claude Code. I have a work account that work pays for, and I have a personal account that I pay for — yes, I hate money and like to set it on fire — but only in the proper context: work or personal. Two money fires.

This is how I set up personal and work Claudes.

Install Claude via Homebrew

Quickstart docs

Then we need to make 2 aliases, one for work, one for play.

Using Separate Config Directories

You can use the CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR environment variable to maintain separate configurations for your personal and company accounts. Here’s how:

1. Create separate configuration directories:

mkdir ~/.claude-personal
mkdir ~/.claude-work

2. Add aliases to your shell configuration:

Open your shell config file (likely ~/.zshrc if you’re using the default Mac terminal):

nano ~/.zshrc

Add these aliases:

alias claude-personal="CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR=~/.claude-personal claude"
alias claude-work="CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR=~/.claude-work claude"

3. Save and reload your shell configuration:

source ~/.zshrc

4. Authenticate each account separately:

For your personal account: Run claude-personal and log in with your personal credentials
For your work account: Run claude-work and log in with your company credentials

How to Use It

Once set up, you can:

Run claude-personal when working on personal projects
Run claude-work when working on company projects
Even run both simultaneously in different terminal tabs (⌘+T) — each will use its own config and usage limits

Each alias maintains completely separate:

Authentication credentials
Conversation history
Usage limits
Settings

Important note: If you have an ANTHROPIC_API_KEY environment variable set on your system, Claude Code will use that API key instead of your subscriptions, which would result in API charges. Make sure this isn’t set if you want to use your plan subscriptions.

This approach keeps your personal and work contexts completely separate while being easy to switch between!

So now, anywhere you would have run claude on the command line, you need to either run claude-personal or claude-work. This applies when adding plugins or MCP or whatever.

claude mcp add --transport http sketch http://localhost:31126/mcp

becomes

claude-personal mcp add --transport http sketch http://localhost:31126/mcp

Enjoy spending 2x the $$ now.