git-switch-profiles

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

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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Where profiles are stored

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

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License

MIT Raphael Neves