Beginner 3 min

Separate Claude Code Configs for Personal and Work

Keep your personal side projects and work codebase in isolated Claude Code instances. Different API keys, different plugins, zero crossover.

Prerequisites

claude-multi installed
Two different API keys (or two provider accounts)

Any

Mixing personal and work projects in the same Claude Code config creates problems. Your work API key ends up in personal sessions. Your personal MCP servers leak into work sessions. Conversation histories get tangled. claude-multi solves this by giving each context its own isolated instance.

Create the work instance

claude-multi
# Add new instance
# Name: work
# Template: your work provider
# Paste your work API key

This creates ~/.claude-work/ with its own settings.json, plugins, and history.

Create the personal instance

claude-multi
# Add new instance
# Name: personal
# Template: your personal provider
# Paste your personal API key

This creates ~/.claude-personal/ with a completely separate config.

The result

# Work projects
claude-work "review the Q3 migration plan"

# Personal projects
claude-personal "build me a bookmark manager in Go"

Two commands, two configs, two billing accounts. No crossover.

What stays isolated

Setting	Work instance	Personal instance
API key	Work billing	Personal billing
Config dir	`~/.claude-work/`	`~/.claude-personal/`
Plugins	Work-specific tools	Personal experiments
MCP servers	Work database, CI	Local tools
History	Work conversations	Personal conversations
`CLAUDE.md`	Work coding standards	Personal preferences

Configure each instance separately

Edit the work instance to point at work resources:

nano ~/.claude-work/settings.json

Add work-specific MCP servers:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "work-postgres": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-postgres", "postgresql://..."]
    }
  }
}

Do the same for the personal instance with personal resources:

nano ~/.claude-personal/settings.json

Keep auto-sync off

Do not enable auto-sync between these instances. Auto-sync shares plugins from ~/.claude/, which defeats the purpose of isolation. Manage plugins independently in each instance.

Using different providers

Nothing stops you from using different providers for each context:

# Work uses GLM (company has a subscription)
claude-work "update the billing service to handle new tax rules"

# Personal uses DeepSeek (pay-per-token, cheaper for side projects)
claude-personal "write a CLI tool that generates static sites"

The provider choice is independent for each instance.

Cleaning up

If you change jobs or stop using one context:

claude-multi
# Pick: Remove instance
# Select: work
# Delete config directory: y

Everything related to that instance is gone. The other instance is unaffected.