GitHub CLI Sync

Your commit identity and your gh account are two different things. gitswitch can keep them together.

--gh-user

Give an account a GitHub username and switching to it also switches gh:

gitswitch add work "Alice Smith" alice@company.com --gh-user alice-corp
gitswitch work
# runs: gh auth switch --user alice-corp

gitswitch login sets this for you automatically — the username comes back from GitHub.

The username must already be logged in to gh:

gh auth status      # who's logged in?
gh auth login       # add another account

When gh isn't there

Nothing breaks. The gh step is the last one and it's advisory only — you get a warning and the git config switch still happens:

warning: gh auth switch --user alice-corp: exec: "gh": executable file not found in $PATH
✓ Switched to 'work' — Alice Smith <alice@company.com>

Accounts with no --gh-user leave the active gh account alone entirely.

gh auth switch is global — and that's a problem

This is worth understanding, because it's the reason Session Isolation exists.

gh auth switch flips one machine-wide setting. Switch identities in one terminal and every other terminal's gh pr create silently starts using that account too, even in unrelated repos:

# terminal 1
gitswitch work        # gh is now alice-corp, everywhere

# terminal 2, in a personal repo, five minutes later
gh pr create          # ...opens the PR as alice-corp. Oops.

Session Isolation fixes this properly. With it on (the default), each gh call resolves the account for the repo you're actually in and passes that account's token for that one command — no global state, no cross-terminal interference:

cd ~/work/api      && gh pr create     # acts as alice-corp
cd ~/personal/blog && gh issue list    # acts as alice — same moment, other terminal

So think of --gh-user as "which account does this profile belong to", and Session Isolation as the thing that makes it apply per repo rather than globally.

Verify

gh auth status

github.com
  ✓ Logged in to github.com account alice-corp (keyring)
  - Active account: true

With Session Isolation on, gh auth status still reports your old global account — by design. Isolation never touches gh's global account file; it overrides the token per call. Judge it by which account a gh command actually acted as.

Troubleshooting

gh auth switch fails

Run it by hand to see why:

gh auth switch --user alice-corp

Usually: that account isn't logged in to gh (gh auth login), or the username in the profile has a typo (gh auth status to check spelling).

gh and my git identity disagree

Expected for accounts without --gh-user — they're independent. Compare:

gh auth status       # the GitHub API account
gitswitch current    # the git commit identity

Next

• Session Isolation — per-repo, per-terminal gh
• HTTPS Push Routing — the same idea, for git push
• Connecting Accounts — gitswitch login