Manage Multiple Codex CLI Accounts

Freelancers and consultants often end up with more than two Codex CLI accounts, a personal one plus one per client. aisw treats every account as an independent named profile, so managing five accounts isn’t meaningfully harder than managing two.

CLI method

1. Add each account as you get access to it.

aisw add codex personal --from-live
aisw add codex client-a --api-key "$CLIENT_A_OPENAI_KEY"
aisw add codex client-b --api-key "$CLIENT_B_OPENAI_KEY"

2. List everything you’ve saved.

aisw list codex

Add --json for machine-readable output if you’re scripting against it.

3. Rename a profile if the label no longer fits.

aisw rename codex client-a acme-corp

4. Remove a profile you no longer need.

aisw remove codex old-client --yes

This deletes the stored credential; it does not affect the account on OpenAI’s side.

5. Switch between any of them.

aisw use codex acme-corp

Labeling profiles for clarity

Use --label when adding a profile to attach a human-readable description shown in aisw list and aisw status, separate from the profile name itself:

aisw add codex acme-corp --label "Acme Corp, contract through Dec 2026"

Verify the result

aisw list codex --json

Confirm every account you expect shows up with the right label and no duplicates.

Common problems

You shouldn’t normally end up with a real duplicate: if you try to add an account under a new name but that OpenAI identity is already saved under a different profile, aisw add rejects the command and names the existing profile instead of creating a second entry for the same account. Use the existing profile, or remove it first if you actually want to re-add it under a new name.

A plain name collision, adding a genuinely different account under a name you’ve already used, is a separate case. aisw add refuses that too unless you pass --yes, which overwrites the existing profile’s stored credential.