codex-acct

Switch between Codex (ChatGPT) accounts by swapping ~/.codex/auth.json.

Lets you keep several codex login sessions on one machine — e.g. a personal Plus account, a Team account, and a Pro account — and flip between them with one command. Slots are stored mode-0600 under ~/.codex/accounts/. Token refreshes are persisted back into the active slot so snapshots don't grow stale.

Install

for f in codex-acct codex-acct-watch; do
  curl -fsSL "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rendrag-git/codex-acct/main/$f" \
    -o "$HOME/.local/bin/$f" && chmod +x "$HOME/.local/bin/$f"
done

Make sure ~/.local/bin is on your PATH. Requires bash, python3, and the Codex CLI.

Keep tokens fresh (recommended)

Codex rotates refresh tokens on every use — if any other session (the ChatGPT app, an IDE, another CLI invocation) refreshes a token, the snapshot you have on disk becomes invalid and the next codex-acct use fails with token_invalidated. The codex-acct-watch watcher closes that gap by mirroring ~/.codex/auth.json into the active slot whenever it changes.

Start it once:

codex-acct watch start

To start it automatically on every shell, add this to ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc:

command -v codex-acct >/dev/null && codex-acct watch start >/dev/null 2>&1 || true

Polling interval defaults to 3 s — override with CODEX_ACCT_WATCH_INTERVAL=<seconds> in your shell rc. Works on Linux and macOS (pure bash, no dependencies).

Or sync on exit via a shell alias

Instead of (or alongside) the watcher, route every codex invocation through codex-acct. It runs the real codex and, on exit, syncs any rotated tokens back into the active slot:

alias codex='codex-acct codex'

Add it to ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc. Because the alias makes codex resolve to codex-acct codex, and codex-acct in turn invokes the real codex from your PATH, make sure a working Codex CLI is installed and ahead of any stale copy on your PATH (aliases don't expand inside the script, so this does not recurse). Note this only captures refreshes from runs you launch yourself — the watcher additionally catches refreshes from the desktop app and other sessions, so the two are complementary.

Usage

codex-acct add personal        # runs `codex login` without revoking the current saved account
codex-acct add work            # log in to a second account, save as "work"
codex-acct use personal        # atomic swap, then restart the app-server daemon
codex-acct use work --no-daemon-restart   # swap without bouncing the daemon
codex-acct list                # show all saved accounts + which is active
codex-acct who                 # show the active account (email, plan, account_id)
codex-acct restore             # swap back to the previous account
codex-acct primary personal    # mark the account paired with a ChatGPT app (warns if you leave it)
codex-acct codex [args...]     # run `codex`, then sync rotated tokens back into the active slot
codex-acct watch start|stop|status   # background watcher, see "Keep tokens fresh"

Existing logins can be captured without re-authenticating:

codex login                    # if you don't already have a session
codex-acct save personal       # snapshot the current ~/.codex/auth.json

Switching restarts the app-server daemon

Codex can run a long-lived app-server daemon that caches your auth in memory. Swapping auth.json underneath it is not enough on its own — the daemon keeps using the old account until it re-reads the file. So use, add, and restore restart that daemon by default: they try the managed codex app-server daemon restart API, and if the daemon is running unmanaged they adopt it under the managed lifecycle and replace its listener with a fresh process that reads the new auth.json at startup.

This means switching accounts briefly interrupts any in-flight app-server session — including the Codex desktop app, which runs its own daemon. Pass --no-daemon-restart to skip the bounce; the swapped account then takes effect only the next time the daemon restarts on its own:

codex-acct use work --no-daemon-restart

How it works

codex login writes JWTs and a refresh token to ~/.codex/auth.json. codex-acct keeps named copies of that file under ~/.codex/accounts/<name>.json and atomically swaps the active one into place. Before each swap it also copies the live auth.json back into the matching saved slot so any token refresh that happened during use is preserved. The tool validates the account identity before saving live auth into a slot, so a stale .active marker or background watcher cannot overwrite the wrong saved account. After the swap it restarts the app-server daemon (see above) so the running Codex process picks up the new account.

License

MIT