Git Multi-Account

A brand-new machine is the best time to split personal and work Git. Once you start pushing, the cost of mixing identities is a commit stamped with the wrong email — or worse, a push authenticated as the wrong GitHub user.

On this laptop the split is physical: personal repos live under ~/Developer/1chooo/, work under ~/Developer/works/. The goal is that every layer — commit author, SSH key, and gh — follows the folder automatically.

#Three Layers, One Mistake

Git identity is not one setting. It is three independent layers that people often treat as one:

I learned this the hard way. includeIf correctly set my personal email inside 1chooo/dotfiles, but the remote was still git@github.com:1chooo/dotfiles.git. SSH used the default work key. GitHub saw your-work-user, who has no write access to 1chooo/dotfiles:

ERROR: Permission to 1chooo/dotfiles.git denied to your-work-user.
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Email was personal. Auth was work. Toggle the path below to see how each layer should resolve.

#Folder-Scoped Git Config

Put the work profile in the global config as the fallback, then load a personal file only when the repo lives under 1chooo/.

Create ~/Developer/1chooo/.gitconfig-personal:

# ~/Developer/1chooo/.gitconfig-personal
[user]
    name = Your Personal Name
    email = you@personal.dev

Then wire it from ~/.gitconfig. The trailing slash on gitdir: matters — without it, nested repos do not match:

# ~/.gitconfig
# Default fallback (work)
[user]
    name = Your Work Name
    email = you@company.com

[includeIf "gitdir:~/Developer/1chooo/"]
    path = ~/Developer/1chooo/.gitconfig-personal

With work as the default, you do not need a separate includeIf for works/. Anything outside 1chooo/ inherits the company identity.

Verify from inside a repo:

git config user.email
git config --list --show-origin | grep user.email

Under 1chooo/ the second command should point at .gitconfig-personal.

#SSH: Work as Default, Personal as Alias

Commit author and SSH key are separate. If your existing ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 is already registered on the work GitHub account, generate a second key for personal use:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "you@personal.dev" -f ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_personal
eval "$(ssh-agent -s)"
ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_personal
pbcopy < ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_personal.pub

Add the public key under the personal GitHub account (Settings → SSH and GPG keys). Then make work the seamless default in ~/.ssh/config:

# Work account (default)
Host github.com
    HostName github.com
    User git
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519

# Personal account
Host github.com-personal
    HostName github.com
    User git
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_personal

Normal work clones keep the URL GitHub shows you:

git clone git@github.com:company/awesome-project.git

Personal remotes must use the host alias so SSH picks the personal key:

git remote set-url origin git@github.com-personal:1chooo/dotfiles.git

Test both:

ssh -T git@github.com
# Hi your-work-user! You've successfully authenticated...

ssh -T git@github.com-personal
# Hi 1chooo! You've successfully authenticated...

#Auto-Rewrite Remotes with insteadOf

Remembering to type github.com-personal on every personal clone defeats the folder setup. Git can rewrite the URL for you — but only when the personal config is active.

Add this to ~/Developer/1chooo/.gitconfig-personal:

# ~/Developer/1chooo/.gitconfig-personal
[url "git@github.com-personal:"]
    insteadOf = git@github.com:

Now, from inside ~/Developer/1chooo/:

git clone git@github.com:1chooo/another-repo.git
cd another-repo
git remote -v
# origin  git@github.com-personal:1chooo/another-repo.git

Work repos under works/ never load that rule, so their remotes stay on plain github.com.

#Extending the Split to gh

brew install gh is fine. The problem is that gh auth login stores one active account under ~/.config/gh/. Logging into work overwrites personal credentials and vice versa.

Give each account its own config directory, then swap GH_CONFIG_DIR based on the current path.

mkdir -p ~/.config/gh-personal ~/.config/gh-work

GH_CONFIG_DIR=~/.config/gh-work gh auth login
# choose SSH → work account

GH_CONFIG_DIR=~/.config/gh-personal gh auth login
# choose SSH → personal account (1chooo)

Add a chpwd hook to ~/.zshrc so the directory change picks the right folder automatically (work remains the fallback outside 1chooo/):

function chpwd_gh_switch() {
  if [[ "$PWD" == "$HOME/Developer/1chooo"* ]]; then
    export GH_CONFIG_DIR="$HOME/.config/gh-personal"
  elif [[ "$PWD" == "$HOME/Developer/works"* ]]; then
    export GH_CONFIG_DIR="$HOME/.config/gh-work"
  else
    export GH_CONFIG_DIR="$HOME/.config/gh-work"
  fi
}

autoload -U add-zsh-hook
add-zsh-hook chpwd chpwd_gh_switch
chpwd_gh_switch

source ~/.zshrc

cd ~/Developer/1chooo/ && gh auth status
# Logged in to github.com as 1chooo

cd ~/Developer/works/ && gh auth status
# Logged in to github.com as your-work-user

#Config Reference

The four files that make the whole stack work. Copy what you need and replace the placeholder emails.

# Default fallback (work)
[user]
    name = Your Work Name
    email = you@company.com

# Personal projects under ~/Developer/1chooo/
[includeIf "gitdir:~/Developer/1chooo/"]
    path = ~/Developer/1chooo/.gitconfig-personal

#Daily Cheat Sheet

Work (~/Developer/works/) — copy the normal SSH URL from GitHub. No host alias, no special flags.

Personal (~/Developer/1chooo/) — clone with the normal URL; insteadOf rewrites it. Existing remotes may still need a one-time git remote set-url.

Before the first push on a new machine, run those four checks in both trees. If email, remote host, SSH greeting, and gh all agree, you are safe to push.

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