The most common setup, and the one gitswitch was built for. Two GitHub accounts — alice (personal) and alice-corp (work) — on one laptop.

No SSH keys to generate. No keys to paste into a settings page. No ~/.ssh/config host aliases.

Set up

gitswitch shell

Say yes to all three steps (they're the defaults), then reload your shell.

gitswitch login --profile personal    # log in as alice
gitswitch login --profile work        # run it again, log in as alice-corp

gitswitch list

✓  personal        Alice Smith <alice@gmail.com>
   work            Alice Smith <alice@company.com>

Also make sure both accounts are logged in to gh (gh auth status, gh auth login). gitswitch gets push tokens from gh, so that's what makes the automatic routing below actually route.

Claim your repos

cd ~/projects/my-library  && gitswitch pin personal
cd ~/work/internal-api    && gitswitch pin work

That's the whole setup. Everything from here is just... working.

Every day

cd ~/work/internal-api
git commit -m "Fix bug"
git push
# committed as alice@company.com, pushed as alice-corp

cd ~/projects/my-library
git commit -m "Add feature"
git push
# committed as alice@gmail.com, pushed as alice — no switching, no thinking

Your prompt tells you which is which:

~/projects/my-library  [personal●] ❯
~/work/internal-api    [work●] ❯

And if you want it spelled out:

gitswitch current
# work — Alice Smith <alice@company.com>  (pinned to this repo)

Cloning

gitswitch personal
git clone git@github.com:alice/my-project.git
# or the https:// URL — gitswitch routes the right token either way

gitswitch work
git clone git@github.com:alice-corp/company-service.git

Then pin the new clone and forget about it.

`gh` follows along

With Session Isolation on (the default), bare gh commands resolve to whichever account owns the repo you're standing in — even in two terminals at once:

cd ~/work/internal-api && gh pr create      # as alice-corp
cd ~/projects/my-library && gh issue list   # as alice, simultaneously

Notifications for each account, no switching:

cd ~/work/internal-api    && gh api /notifications
cd ~/projects/my-library  && gh api /notifications

Contributing to someone else's repo

Pick the identity you want to be seen as, then pin it so the repo never asks again:

git clone git@github.com:someone/open-project.git
cd open-project
gitswitch pin personal
git commit -m "Add contribution" && git push

Already pushed as the wrong account?

gitswitch reauthor 1 --to personal --push
# rewrites the last commit and force-pushes with --force-with-lease

Then pin the repo so it can't happen twice. If someone else has already pulled those commits, tell them before you rewrite.

Lots of repos?

Organise by account and pin as you go — the learning covers the ones you haven't got to yet:

~/github/
├── alice/          # personal
└── alice-corp/     # work

Prefer your own SSH keys?

Entirely optional — HTTPS is the default and needs nothing from you. But if you already manage keys:

gitswitch add personal "Alice" alice@gmail.com \
  --ssh-key ~/.ssh/id_personal --gh-user alice

See SSH Keys.

Open Source + Work — when one account is a company account
Multi-client Freelancer — three or more accounts
Pins & Identity Awareness

Two GitHub Accounts