delegating-to-claude-accounts

name	delegating-to-claude-accounts
description	Use when you need to run a prompt under a DIFFERENT Claude Code account/subscription than the current session, e.g. offload a headless task to the work (claude-work) or second (claude-acc2) account, spread cost across another account's headless credit pool, or run under an isolated profile/auth. Not for same-account parallelism (use the Agent tool for that).

Delegating to Claude Code accounts

Overview

Roman runs several Claude Code accounts on one Mac. Each is a fully separate profile selected by CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR (own auth, settings, MCP, history), invoked through a wrapper on PATH. To use another account from a session, call its wrapper headless with -p — it spawns an independent claude process under that subscription and prints the answer.

Accounts

Command	Config dir	Account
claude (default)	~/.claude	primary / private — usually the current session
claude-work	~/.claude-work	work (Firma)
claude-acc2	~/.claude-acc2	second personal
claude-science · claude-bioscience · operon	~/.claude-science	science (compiled launcher, 3 entry points → same profile)

claude-work / claude-acc2 are one-line shell wrappers in ~/.local/bin (CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR=~/.claude-… exec claude "$@"). The science ones are a compiled launcher symlinked from ~/.claude-science/bin/.

Quick reference

# One-shot answer under the work account. ALWAYS -p, ALWAYS a timeout.
timeout 180 claude-work -p "your prompt"

# Structured output (session_id, total_cost_usd, usage):
timeout 180 claude-work -p "your prompt" --output-format json

# The delegated task needs tools? -p refuses tool use by default. Either
# pipe the data in and avoid tools entirely...
git log --oneline -50 | timeout 180 claude-acc2 -p "Summarize this git log"
# ...or grant exactly what it needs:
timeout 180 claude-work -p "summarize the git log" --allowedTools "Bash(git log:*)"

Gotchas

• -p is mandatory. Without it the wrapper opens the interactive TUI and the Bash tool hangs until timeout. Always add timeout.
• Tool permissions block headless. A bare claude-work -p cannot run Bash/Edit/etc. — it will refuse. Pipe data in, or pass --allowedTools "…" / --permission-mode acceptEdits (or bypassPermissions for full trust).
• Billing is per account. Since 2026-06-15, headless -p spends that account's separate monthly headless credit pool (then full API rates), not its interactive 5h/7d subscription quota. So delegating does not dodge an interactive rate limit; it spreads the per-account headless pool.
• Wrapper vs. alias. The ~/.local/bin/claude-work script works in the non-interactive Bash tool; the zsh alias does not. If a wrapper isn't found (or a cmux/PATH shim intercepts claude), fall back to the explicit form: CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR=~/.claude-work claude -p "…".
• Trust dialog on a new workspace. First use of another profile in a repo warns "workspace not trusted" and ignores that profile's permissions.allow. Fix: set projects["<repo-dir>"].hasTrustDialogAccepted = true in that profile's .claude.json (e.g. ~/.claude-acc2/.claude.json), or run claude-acc2 interactively once and accept.
• No cheap attribution. You can't confirm which account answered without spending a token on it; trust the config dir you selected.

When NOT to use

• Same-account parallelism / subtasks → use the Agent tool (subagents). It shares context, spends no extra subscription, and needs no separate auth.
• Reach for account delegation only to (a) use a different subscription's quota, or (b) genuinely isolate auth/config/MCP.