git-switch-profiles

Switching between a work and a personal git account is painful. You forget to change your email, push a personal commit under your company name, or spend five minutes figuring out why SSH authentication is broken.

git-switch-profiles fixes this. One command switches your entire git identity — name, email, and SSH key — and actively blocks the other accounts so nothing leaks through.

gsp work      # everything switches to your work identity
gsp personal  # everything switches back

Install

npm install -g git-switch-profiles

Requirements: Node.js 14+, git, ssh-keygen, and a running ssh-agent (standard on macOS and most Linux distros).

Setting up a profile

gsp init

This walks you through everything interactively:

• A name for the profile (work, personal, freelance, anything)
• The author name and email that will appear on your commits
• An SSH key — generate a fresh one or pick an existing key from ~/.ssh/
• Which git hosts this profile owns (github.com, gitlab.com, bitbucket.org, or your own)

That's it. Your SSH host keys are trusted automatically so the first push just works.

Switching profiles

gsp <name>

Under the hood this does three things atomically:

• Sets user.name and user.email in your global ~/.gitconfig
• Loads the right SSH key into the agent
• Updates ~/.ssh/config to route the active profile's hosts to the correct key, and hard blocks every other profile's hosts

That last part matters. When you switch to personal, your work hosts get PubkeyAuthentication no — the wrong key literally cannot authenticate, no matter what's left in the agent or macOS Keychain.

All commands

| Command | Description | |---|---| | gsp init | Add a new profile | | gsp <name> | Switch to a profile | | gsp list | See all profiles and which is active | | gsp current | Show the active profile | | gsp info <name> | Full details — key path, hosts, status | | gsp edit <name> | Update a profile | | gsp remove <name> | Delete a profile |

SSH key types

When creating a new key you can choose:

| Type | Notes | |---|---| | RSA 4096 | Default. Works everywhere. | | Ed25519 | Modern and faster. Recommended for new setups. | | ECDSA 521 | Elliptic curve alternative. |

Where profiles are stored

~/.git-switch/profiles.json — plain JSON, yours to inspect or back up.

License

MIT © Raphael Neves