Claude Code Profiles and Local Skill Activation

Overview

This skill creates an isolated-but-shared profile system for Claude Code CLI. Each profile gets its own .claude.json state file (provider credentials and session history) while sharing skills, projects, hook scripts, agents, and installed plugin state across all profiles — and converging each profile's settings.json (hook registration, marketplaces, env feature flags, permissions, preferences) plus the behavior slice of its .claude.json (e.g. workflowSizeGuideline) from the default profile, so the only intended difference between profiles is the model/provider.

The result: you can open one terminal with Kimi, another with DeepSeek, another with Anthropic — each running as a fully independent Claude Code process, without configuration bleed.

How It Works

• CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR tells Claude Code CLI which directory to use as its config root.
• Each profile lives in ~/.claude-profiles/<name>/ with an isolated .claude.json.
• Content directories (skills/, projects/, hooks/, agents/, settings/) are symlinked back to the main ~/.claude/ directory so you only maintain one copy. Note this shares hook scripts, not hook registration — registration lives in each profile's own settings.json (next bullet).
• Config layer — settings.json: each profile has its own settings.json (Claude Code treats it as config-dir-local), so everything stored there — hook registration, extraKnownMarketplaces, enabledPlugins, env feature flags, permissions, behavior preferences — silently drifts the moment it changes in the default profile (measured 2026-07-18: 9/9 real profiles had zero hook registrations). sync-profile-settings.py is the converger: registered as a SessionStart hook, it copies every key from the default profile's settings.json into every profile's, except identity keys (top-level model and advisorModel — the latter is Anthropic-model routing a third-party endpoint can't serve; and env vars that carry provider routing or Anthropic-native isolation — ANTHROPIC_*, CLAUDE_CODE_SUBAGENT_MODEL, ENABLE_TOOL_SEARCH, DISABLE_GROWTHBOOK/TELEMETRY/AUTOUPDATER — which the provider settings file deliberately sets differently). Within env, convergence is two-way for non-identity keys: main's keys overwrite the profile's, and a non-identity key main no longer carries is deleted from the profile and reported (identity keys are exempt — main never carries them, so their absence is not deletion evidence; landed v3.60.1). Profile-only top-level keys are preserved; nested collections inside a key main also has (e.g. permissions.allow, enabledPlugins) converge wholesale to main's value, and any profile-only nested entries dropped that way are listed (count on write, detail under --check) so the loss is visible rather than silent. This is what makes "everything except the model works in every profile" actually hold.
  • Scope is every profile, in every invocation. No argument-free, --all, or --check run ever covers a subset: all of ~/.claude-profiles/* plus $CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR, every time. A run prints one line per profile it actually changed and nothing when there is no drift — so drift shows up in the session-start output instead of hiding, and a silent session start means converged. A $CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR that is unset, empty, or not a profile directory is skipped, never created.
  • Exit codes: the argument-free run exits 0 unconditionally — it is a session-start hook and never blocks a session, including when a main file is corrupt (it warns, converges nothing, and exits 0, because a corrupt main reads as empty and converging toward empty would strip hooks from every profile). --check exits 1 on drift and 2 on a corrupt main file or a profile it could not read; --all writes and exits 2 on those same two failures — the difference between them is that --check writes nothing, not which failures return 2. --check --all is the same audit as --check. One unreadable profile is reported and skipped — it never cancels convergence for the others.
• State layer — .claude.json behavior keys: settings.json is not the only per-profile config file. Claude Code also keeps a per-profile state file (the main profile's is ~/.claude.json; each third-party profile's is <profile>/.claude.json — asymmetric paths, verified on disk), and a few behavior settings live only there (workflowSizeGuideline, notification/UI preferences). On 2026-08-17 workflowSizeGuideline: small existed only on the main profile and 10/11 third-party profiles had no copy — a Kimi session fanned one Dynamic Workflow out to 30+ agents with no size guidance in its system prompt. The same converger therefore also syncs an allowlist of behavior keys into each profile's .claude.json. The safety mechanism is a three-way classifier in the script, not a hand-maintained key list: allowlisted behavior keys sync; state/cache/counter/migration/credential keys (matched by name patterns) are never touched; anything unknown-and-different is reported — one line per drifted key per run, until a human classifies it (the tripwire that surfaces the next behavior key the day it appears). Writes are backup + atomic-replace; measured safe against a live harness rewriting the file (a marker key survived 30+ minutes of an active session). Applies next session — the harness reads this file at startup.
• Exception — plugins/: marketplace content and install state are shared, but each profile keeps its own known_marketplaces.json. Claude validates a marketplace's installLocation with path.resolve() (which does NOT resolve symlinks), so a single shared file would make every non-writing profile report "corrupted installLocation". claude-plugins-sync.py builds and maintains this per-profile structure.
• claude-plugins-sync.py also mirrors enabledPlugins from the default ~/.claude/settings.json into each profile's settings.json (sharing cache files is not enough; Claude Code treats "enabled" state as config-dir-local). It runs at profile launch and reactively — the LaunchAgent in the next bullet re-runs it on every write to the default profile's settings.json, so claude plugin enable/disable --scope user typically propagates to every profile within seconds without a relaunch (verified 2026-08-22). The mirror adopts first: enabledPlugins keys that exist only in some profile's settings.json (the way claude plugin install writes them) are written back into the default profile before mirroring — consistent values only; cross-profile conflicts stay per-profile behind a standing warning instead of being silently overwritten (added 2026-09-03, after adopt-less mirroring was confirmed as the mechanical root cause of recurring skill-visibility losses). The SessionStart converger above covers the same key as part of its whole-settings sync; claude-plugins-sync.py remains the owner of the per-profile known_marketplaces.json structure. skill-install-audit.py reconciles the registry / installed / enabled / Codex-manifest / ~/.agents/skills layers read-only, plus the daemon's pinned runtime version and whether the checkouts it judged everything against are themselves behind. prune-source-sync-backups.py removes only the .source-sync-backups/ buckets git can reproduce; a bucket holding even one blob no repository has is reported and left alone.
• Local source sync keeps approved source-backed routes aligned for each host. Before selecting or repairing entries, read the host-specific activation contract. It owns the manifest fields, marketplace expansion, Claude plugin/direct-link distinction, unresolved-name handling, collision safety, and legacy compatibility. Source registration alone does not choose activation policy; do not hand-create links or repurpose the manifest to manage third-party inventory.
• Sync scripts use a shared cross-process lock. This is required because users often open several provider windows from tmux or multiple terminals at once; concurrent launches must serialize marketplace/cache rewrites while still allowing all profiles to start.
• For the full local-source architecture, read references/local-source-sync-architecture.md before changing these scripts.
• Provider routing is done via ~/.claude/settings/<name>.json, which sets ANTHROPIC_MODEL, ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL, and ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN for that window. That file is a full settings file rather than an env file, and it is the one layer the converger never touches — claude-profile launches with claude --settings ~/.claude/settings/<name>.json, while the converger only ever writes <profile>/settings.json. So anything that has to be per-profile and has to survive every session start belongs here; put it in the profile's own settings.json and the next convergence takes it back. Measured 2026-09-15 on permissions.deny: one claude -p run listed 50 tools with an empty --settings file and 48 with {"permissions":{"deny":["WebSearch","WebFetch"]}}, the two named tools being the difference. The cost of not knowing this is a detour: the session that worked it out had already forked the converger to add a per-profile exception before noticing that one key in the provider file did the same job with no code change.
• Credentials ride in that same file, so anything scripting a profile has to pass --settings as well. CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR=<profile> claude -p ... on its own answers Not logged in · Please run /login, because the token lives in the provider file and nothing else loads it. The message names login; the cause is the missing flag.
• The converger has no single-profile mode: every invocation covers all of ~/.claude-profiles/* plus $CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR, and no flag narrows that. To converge one profile on demand, point CLAUDE_PROFILES_ROOT at a directory holding only it, or run --check and read the per-profile lines. The default profile's own files are the source and are never written.

⚠️ Never run the converger against a synthetic main

Scope is every profile — all of ~/.claude-profiles/* plus $CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR — and the source of truth is CLAUDE_MAIN_CONFIG_DIR. Point that at a throwaway directory while CLAUDE_PROFILES_ROOT or $CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR still reaches a real profile, and the run converges that real profile toward the synthetic main: its whole hooks object is replaced by whatever the fake main holds, and its env gains the fake main's keys. Every guard registered in that profile stops firing. The output does name hooks among the keys it synced and, when the overwrite drops profile-only entries, reports how many — but nothing in it says guards stopped firing, so it reads as the converger doing its job. A synthetic main is safe only when the profiles root and $CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR are synthetic and disposable too.

Before running it by hand, check both halves of the scope:

echo "MAIN=$CLAUDE_MAIN_CONFIG_DIR ROOT=$CLAUDE_PROFILES_ROOT ACTIVE=$CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR"

An unset CLAUDE_PROFILES_ROOT is not a green light — it defaults to the real ~/.claude-profiles, so every real profile converges. Stop unless both CLAUDE_PROFILES_ROOT and $CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR are synthetic and disposable. Test fixtures must build the subprocess environment from a scrubbed base instead of inheriting the live one — a shell profile sets these variables, and unset inside a script does not reliably reach a child process:

env -u CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR -u CLAUDE_MAIN_CONFIG_DIR -u CLAUDE_PROFILES_ROOT …

Decide whether a run wrote anything mechanically, not by eye. Record the target profile's settings.json size before the run and compare after. .sync-backup is written with shutil.copy2, which preserves the source mtime, so an old backup timestamp does not prove nothing was written — compare size and bytes.

If a real profile did get written, restore from that profile's own backup and verify byte-for-byte:

cp -p <profile>/settings.json.sync-backup <profile>/settings.json

Check size, JSON validity, top-level key count, hooks length, unexpected env keys, and sandbox signatures such as /bin/true. Then scan the other profiles: scope is all of them, so one run can hit several.

One-Click Setup Workflow

When the user says something like "set up Claude Code profiles" or "I want to use Kimi and DeepSeek in different windows":

1. Check prerequisites

   • claude CLI is installed: which claude
   • Shell is zsh or bash: detect via $SHELL
   • python3 is available

2. Install the profile manager scripts — symlink them, do not copy

   On a machine that has this repo checked out (the maintainer case), run the bundled installer:

   <absolute-path-to-this-repo>/daymade-claude-code/claude-switch-models-setup/scripts/setup.sh
   

   scripts/setup.sh is the single source for the exact deployment set. It links each helper into ~/.config/claude-switch-models-setup/ and seeds the activation manifest only when it does not already exist. Do not maintain another helper list here. No chmod step is needed: the deployment is by symlink, and the source files retain their committed modes.

   Recorder files are deployed without enabling the optional wrapper. Existing ordinary recorder copies must be compared and preserved before setup replaces them with links; pinned deployments follow the “advance the pin” procedure.

   Why symlinks and not cp: ~/.config/… is what actually runs — the LaunchAgent and claude-profile invoke scripts by that path — while this repo holds their source. Copies drift, and nothing about a deployed copy looks different from its source, so "am I editing the SSOT?" is not a judgement anyone reliably makes. Measured on one machine before the switch: a lock-placement fix sat in the repo for 26 days while the deployed copy kept running the bug it fixed, and two cleanup routines written straight into the deployed copy never reached version control at all — drift in both directions, silently. A link removes both, for as long as it stays a link — an atomic-save editor, an rsync or a stray cp turns one back into a real file without saying so, which is why this is worth re-checking rather than declaring solved. It also lets sync-local-skill-sources.py locate its own source repo by resolving its own path, instead of falling back to guessing.

   Worth re-checking how? Any periodic check works; there is none bundled with this skill. One line, run wherever you keep such things:

   for f in ~/.config/claude-switch-models-setup/*.py ~/.config/claude-switch-models-setup/*.sh; do
     [ -L "$f" ] && [ -e "$f" ] || echo "not a live link: $f"
   done
   

   If one has become a real file, move it aside before re-linking — it may hold edits that exist nowhere else, which is the whole problem being described: mv "$f" "$f.local-edits" && ln -sf <source> "$f", then diff.

   On a machine without the repo, copy the scripts listed by the installer out of this skill bundle instead — and accept that repo fixes will not reach it until you copy again.

   On a machine whose LaunchAgent runs the pinned plugin copy (the maintainer layout described in local-source-sync-architecture.md), these same links point at that copy's version directory under .../plugins/cache/..., not at the checkout, and move only when the pin is advanced (troubleshooting.md, "advance the pin"). The installer refuses to relink such a machine to the checkout (CSMS_SETUP_RELINK_TO_CHECKOUT=1 overrides), because the daemon and claude-profile would then follow whatever branch the checkout sits on. The live-link check above applies to both layouts.

3. Add shell integration

   • Source the profile manager in ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc
   • Add aliases: csk, csks, csd, csg, css
   • Add any further per-account/per-plan variant alias by hand if needed — claude-profiles.sh only defines the aliases listed above
   • Tell the user to run source ~/.zshrc (or open a new terminal)

4. Generate provider settings files

   • For each provider the user wants, create ~/.claude/settings/<provider>.json
   • Use the templates in assets/templates/ as a starting point
   • Prompt the user for their API key and base URL; never hardcode defaults
   • Set the context window correctly for this specific provider — [1m] suffix vs explicit CLAUDE_CODE_MAX_CONTEXT_TOKENS/CLAUDE_CODE_AUTO_COMPACT_WINDOW, see "Configuring Context Window Size" below. Do this explicitly for every new profile rather than copying whatever the nearest template happens to already have — the nearest template not needing it is not evidence that this one doesn't either.
   • Include the required isolation flags:
     • CLAUDE_CODE_SUBAGENT_MODEL (same as ANTHROPIC_MODEL)
     • ENABLE_TOOL_SEARCH: "false"
     • DISABLE_GROWTHBOOK: "1"
     • DISABLE_TELEMETRY: "1"
     • DISABLE_AUTOUPDATER: "1"

5. Initialize profile directories

   • Run claude-profiles-init
   • This creates ~/.claude-profiles/<provider>/ with isolated .claude.json and symlinks
   • On maintainer machines, this also repairs local source symlinks before syncing plugin metadata

   Statusline wiring: claude-profiles-init auto-detects a statusline script from ~/.claude/settings.json or ~/.claude/statusline.sh and injects it into each new profile. If neither is present, profiles will work but without a status bar. It is the AI's job to decide whether the user needs a statusline, install the statusline-generator skill if appropriate, and run its installer — not the profile setup script. Do not hardcode dependency installs into shell scripts.

6. Register the settings converger

   • Add the converger as a SessionStart hook in the default profile's ~/.claude/settings.json hooks.SessionStart list, using an absolute direct-Python command such as '/absolute/path/to/python3' '/absolute/path/to/sync-profile-settings.py'. Do not register the .py file by shebang or through a package manager: this hook exists to repair every profile and must not wait on a shared environment/cache lock. Register it without arguments — the argument-free call is the session-start mode, which converges every profile and never blocks the session. Do not add --all to the hook command: --all is the human mode and exits 2 on a corrupt main file or a profile it could not read, which would block session start.
   • Run the initial alignment: python3 ~/.config/claude-switch-models-setup/sync-profile-settings.py --all
   • From then on every profile converges its settings.json and the behavior slice of its .claude.json from the default profile at each session start, whoever starts it (changes apply next session). The default profile's own files are the SSOT and are never written. Audit without writing: --check (or --check --all, the same audit).

7. Verify isolation

   • Run claude-profiles-doctor
   • Confirm each profile directory has .claude.json and valid symlinks

8. Select local source Skills for Codex and Claude

   • Skip this for normal students or users who do not edit the skill source repos
   • Read the host-specific activation contract, then edit the machine's activation manifest for the requested hosts. Use its compatibility rules only for consumers that still retain a legacy path.
   • Preview with python3 ~/.config/claude-switch-models-setup/sync-local-skill-sources.py, read every affected path, then apply with python3 ~/.config/claude-switch-models-setup/sync-local-skill-sources.py --apply.
   • On a maintainer macOS machine, run ~/.config/claude-switch-models-setup/sync-local-skill-sources-daemon.sh --install
   • This watches the activation manifest, default Claude install state, and local marketplace manifests, then repairs derived state after selection, install/uninstall, or plugin topology changes

9. Show the user how to launch

   • csk → Kimi K3 window
   • csks → Kimi K2.7 highspeed window
   • csd → DeepSeek window
   • csg → GLM window
   • css → StepFun window
   • claude (no alias) → default Anthropic profile
   • Optional: hand-add a per-account/per-plan variant alias yourself, e.g. alias cssp='claude-profile step-pay --dangerously-skip-permissions' — claude-profiles.sh does not generate this; it is a manual pattern on top

Commands

After setup, the user can run:

claude-profiles-init          # Re-scan settings/*.json, create missing profiles;
                               # reports symlink drift (real dirs that should be symlinks).
                               # Add --repair to archive drift and replace with symlinks.
claude-profile <name>         # Launch a specific profile
claude-profiles-ls            # List profiles
claude-profiles-doctor        # Check symlink health
claude-profile-rm <name>      # Remove a profile's isolation directory
python3 ~/.config/claude-switch-models-setup/claude-plugins-sync.py
                               # Repair per-profile plugin structure and enabledPlugins
python3 ~/.config/claude-switch-models-setup/sync-profile-settings.py --all
                               # Converge every profile from the default profile:
                               # settings.json (hooks, marketplaces, env flags,
                               # permissions, preferences) + .claude.json behavior
                               # keys (workflowSizeGuideline etc.). Session start
                               # already does this for all profiles; run --all to
                               # apply a manual settings edit immediately.
                               # --check audits the same scope without writing
python3 ~/.config/claude-switch-models-setup/sync-local-skill-sources.py
                               # Maintainers: preview host selections and affected paths
python3 ~/.config/claude-switch-models-setup/sync-local-skill-sources.py --apply
                               # Apply the inspected Codex, Claude, and explicit
                               # legacy compatibility changes
~/.config/claude-switch-models-setup/sync-local-skill-sources-daemon.sh --install
                               # Maintainers: install automatic macOS watcher

These are not day-to-day commands. Normal source edits are live through symlinks. The one-shot commands are for repair, bootstrap, or non-macOS environments without the LaunchAgent watcher.

Provider Templates

Use the provider templates in assets/templates/. Read the chosen file for its model, endpoint, context settings, and thinking behavior; do not infer those values from a hand-maintained template summary.

Every template uses the <API_KEY> placeholder. Templates for configurable gateways also use <BASE_URL>; the MiniMax templates pin the documented regional endpoint. Ask the user for every real placeholder value; do not guess or reuse values from the current machine unless the user explicitly provides them.

MiniMax model behavior

Configuring Context Window Size

Every provider template sets the model's context window one of two ways — get this wrong and Claude Code doesn't know how much context the model can actually hold. Undershoot and it compacts (summarizes, drops old detail) far earlier than the provider actually requires; overshoot and it won't compact until the real limit is already blown past.

The full client-side mechanism of the [1m] marker — what it strips off the model field, what it adds to the anthropic-beta header, and why a missing [1m] does not mean the provider can't hold a big prompt — is documented in references/context-window-config.md. Reach for it when a context number looks wrong, not at template-writing time.

Decision rule

When writing a new provider's settings/<name>.json, pick based on the provider's real, verified context window — not the model's marketing name, and not by copying whatever the nearest template happens to do:

deepseek.json and glm.json set both [1m] and an explicit CLAUDE_CODE_AUTO_COMPACT_WINDOW: "1000000". That's belt-and-suspenders, not redundant filler to strip out — the exact precedence between the marker and the explicit override hasn't been independently reverse-engineered, so if you're copying one of those two templates, keep both rather than dropping one.

The MiniMax-M3 templates use the same 1M marker plus an explicit 1000000 auto-compact value. The MiniMax-M2.7 templates use explicit 204800 limits with no marker.

The full step-2-16k template-correctness war-story (why an internally-consistent-looking context value is not the same as a currently-correct one — cross-check the model name against the provider's live docs, not just the numbers around it), plus a reusable recipe to verify whether any env var actually changes the bytes sent over the wire (a local http.server capture, since --debug api only shows internal state), live in references/context-window-config.md.

Common base URLs (verify with your provider)

Important: The exact endpoint depends on whether the user is calling the provider directly or through a compatibility gateway (e.g., OpenRouter). Always ask.

Shared vs. Isolated

Troubleshooting

A profile directory exists but claude-profiles-doctor reports it as an "orphan profile"

Symptom: claude-profiles-doctor reports WARN: orphan profile — no settings/<name>.json; claude-profile <name> fails. Run: claude-profile-rm <name>.

Cause: the profile isolation directory exists under ~/.claude-profiles/ but the corresponding ~/.claude/settings/<name>.json provider config file is missing. claude-profiles-init only scans settings/*.json, so an orphan profile's symlinks are never created or maintained, and claude-profile <name> will fail to launch with "Error: Settings file not found." The profile directory may still contain useful per-profile data (history.jsonl, .claude.json with provider credentials, settings.json, skill workspaces).

Fix:

• If the profile is no longer needed: claude-profile-rm <name> — this safely removes the isolation directory (it checks for unexpected files first).
• If you want to revive it: recreate the settings file at ~/.claude/settings/<name>.json (use a provider template from assets/templates/), then run claude-profiles-init.

A shared directory (skills/projects/hooks/agents/...) shows as a real directory, not a symlink

Symptom: claude-profiles-doctor reports <name> is a real directory (expected symlink to ~/.claude/<name>) — drift; run: claude-profiles-init --repair.

Cause: the profile was created before the symlink-convergence design landed (or was hand-created), so a shared content directory ended up as a real per-profile directory instead of a symlink. That profile's copy now silently diverges from the main ~/.claude/ copy — its skills/projects/hooks/agents are not the same as every other profile's. The broken-symlink check cannot see this (a real directory is not a broken link); on a real machine this drift went undetected for months until the dedicated real-directory check was added (2026-07-21: legacy profiles created before this check existed carried real projects/ dirs for months, undetected).

Fix (reversible — data is archived, never deleted):

claude-profiles-init --repair

For each drifted directory this archives the real dir to <name>.pre-symlink-bak-<timestamp> inside the profile directory, then creates the symlink that should have been there. Run claude-profiles-doctor again to confirm a clean bill. If an archive turns out to hold data you need, it is sitting right there — nothing was destroyed.

Note on what gets shared: after repair, that directory points at the main ~/.claude/<name> copy, so the profile sees the same skills/projects/etc. as the default profile — which is the entire point of the shared-symlink design. The per-profile state that must stay isolated (.claude.json, settings.json identity keys like model/provider env, plugins/known_marketplaces.json) is never one of these symlinked dirs, so repair never touches it. Inspect the archive before discarding it if the profile held session/history data you care about — those would now resolve to the shared copy.

Marketplace says "corrupted installLocation"

Symptom: /plugin or claude plugin marketplace update reports corrupted installLocation ... expected a path inside <config-dir>/plugins/marketplaces.

Cause: known_marketplaces.json ended up shared across profiles (or hand-edited). Its installLocation is config-dir-specific because Claude validates with path.resolve() (symlinks NOT resolved), so one shared copy cannot satisfy multiple profiles.

Fix: claude-plugins-sync.py rebuilds each profile's own copy + the shared-content symlinks. It runs automatically at claude-profile init/launch; to run manually:

python3 ~/.config/claude-switch-models-setup/claude-plugins-sync.py

Skill exists in default Claude but is missing in Kimi/GLM/DeepSeek

Symptom: the default Anthropic profile can see a skill, but a third-party profile cannot.

Cause: Claude Code stores enabledPlugins in each config directory's settings.json. Sharing plugins/cache only makes files available; it does not enable them.

Fix:

python3 ~/.config/claude-switch-models-setup/claude-plugins-sync.py

Then restart the affected Claude Code window.

Local source edits do not show up in Claude Code or Codex

Read the source-change and pin-update procedure. It distinguishes source-backed routes from pinned runtime copies and inventory reports from successful synchronization and fresh-host discovery.

Source sync also manages derived cache artifacts:

• Version-alias symlinks. Each cache link is named after the marketplace's current version, so every version bump left the previous link behind pointing at the very same source directory. The pass now removes sibling links that resolve to the same source; real directories are never touched, since Claude Code installs those and a live session may still hold them through .in_use.
• installed_plugins.json backups. Each run that changes the JSON writes a backup. The KEEP_JSON_BACKUPS constant in the script caps the retained set; the names end in a YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS stamp, so lexical order is chronological.

Both are visible in a dry run before --apply touches anything.

A profile is missing hooks, marketplaces, env flags, or other default-profile settings

Symptom: the default profile has hook guards, marketplaces, or feature flags configured, but a third-party profile behaves as if they don't exist (no PreToolUse guards fire, claude plugin marketplace list is empty, a feature enabled in the default profile is off).

Sibling symptom, different layer (2026-08-17): a behavior preference set on the default profile — e.g. the workflow size guideline — has no effect in third-party profiles (a Kimi session fanned a Dynamic Workflow out to 30+ agents despite small being set on main). That key lives in the per-profile .claude.json, which symlinks and the settings.json sync both miss. See "Default-profile behavior settings don't reach third-party profiles" in references/troubleshooting.md.

Cause: those live in each profile's own settings.json, which is config-dir-local — symlinking directories does not cover the config layer, and it drifts silently the moment the default profile changes.

Fix:

python3 ~/.config/claude-switch-models-setup/sync-profile-settings.py --all

Then restart the affected window. Once the converger is registered as a SessionStart hook (setup step 6), the next session start converges every profile — not just the one that started — so --all is only needed to apply a manual settings edit immediately.

Third-party profile tries to use Anthropic-specific features

Symptom: WebSearch or other Anthropic-native tools fail with 400 errors. Fix: Ensure the profile's settings.json sets:

{
  "env": {
    "ENABLE_TOOL_SEARCH": "false",
    "DISABLE_GROWTHBOOK": "1",
    "DISABLE_TELEMETRY": "1",
    "DISABLE_AUTOUPDATER": "1"
  }
}

Subagent calls fall back to a different model

Symptom: Subagents inside a Kimi window call claude-opus-4-7. Fix: Set CLAUDE_CODE_SUBAGENT_MODEL to the same value as ANTHROPIC_MODEL in the profile's settings.json.

A huge-context provider compacts/summarizes way too early, or the statusline context number looks wrong

Symptom: a provider whose own docs claim ~1M tokens of context gets auto-compacted by Claude Code well below that — long sessions get summarized when there's clearly no real need to yet, or the context percentage in the statusline tracks like it's looking at a ~200K model instead of the real ceiling.

Cause: the profile's ANTHROPIC_MODEL (and its ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_*_MODEL / CLAUDE_CODE_SUBAGENT_MODEL siblings) is missing the [1m] marker. Claude Code has no other way to learn the provider's real context size — the request itself succeeding with a huge prompt doesn't tell Claude Code anything, since that's a property of the upstream provider, not of the client. See references/context-window-config.md for the full mechanism.

Fix: add the literal [1m] suffix to ANTHROPIC_MODEL, every ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_*_MODEL, and CLAUDE_CODE_SUBAGENT_MODEL in the profile's settings.json (match kimi.json's pattern). Restart the affected window.

Adding a New Provider Later

1. Create ~/.claude/settings/<new-provider>.json using a template.
2. Check the provider's real, verified context window and configure it — [1m] marker or explicit CLAUDE_CODE_MAX_CONTEXT_TOKENS/CLAUDE_CODE_AUTO_COMPACT_WINDOW, see "Configuring Context Window Size" below and references/context-window-config.md. Don't skip this because the template you copied from happened not to need it.
3. Run claude-profiles-init.
4. Add an alias to the shell rc file if desired.

Security Notes

• API keys are written to ~/.claude/settings/<provider>.json in plain text, the same way Claude Code stores ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN. This matches Claude Code's own security model.
• This skill never uploads keys or settings anywhere.
• For public distribution, the bundled scripts contain no hardcoded secrets, endpoints, or user-specific paths.

Next Step

After setup, the user can immediately test by opening two terminals and running csk (Kimi K3) in one and csd in the other. Each window is independent.

When the person being set up is a workshop attendee doing it on their own machine rather than someone you are driving, hand them references/student-setup-guide.md instead of walking them through this file — it is written for them, front to back, without the maintenance and troubleshooting material they do not need yet.