If you pool several Claude accounts for capacity, standing that pool up is the slow part — a browser login and a saved profile per account. Doing it again on every laptop, every devcontainer, and after every reinstall is pure busywork. Power Claude now lets you export the whole pool to a single file and import it anywhere, so you set it up once and carry it.
The problem: a pool you have to rebuild every time
A single Claude account hits a wall at its rate-limit window. The well-worn fix is to run more than one account and rotate between them — each account is its own subscription with its own limits, and pooling them is what Power Claude automates. The cost of that approach has always been setup: for each account you log in through the browser and save it as a profile.
That cost is fine once. It is annoying the second time, on a new machine, and infuriating the fifth time, in a fresh devcontainer that gets rebuilt weekly. The accounts already exist — you are just re-authenticating the same logins over and over because there was no way to move them.
The fix: export once, import anywhere
Power Claude treats your account pool as portable data. Export writes every linked account — credentials and identity lookup included — to one self-describing JSON file. Import reads that file back in on another workspace, another computer, or after a reinstall. No re-login per account; the pool moves intact.
Both actions live on both surfaces, so it works whether you live in the editor or on the command line, and the two are interchangeable — a file exported from the CLI imports from the panel and vice-versa.
In the VS Code extension
Open the Power Claude dashboard and find the Your Accounts panel:
- Click Export, acknowledge the credential warning, and pick where to save the file.
- On the other machine, click Import, choose the file, and pick whether to skip accounts you already have. The dashboard refreshes itself.
Import is also offered on the empty "No accounts configured yet" state, so a brand-new install can pull its pool straight in.
On the `pc` CLI
# on the source machine
pc export --output accounts.json
# on the destination machine
pc import accounts.jsonAdd --dedup to skip accounts whose email already exists on the destination. That is the entire workflow.
Treat the file like a password
Here is the part that matters, said plainly: a plain export contains your Claude login tokens in clear text. Anyone who gets the file can sign in as you. Power Claude does what it can on its side — it asks you to confirm before writing a plaintext bundle, writes the file owner-only (0600), and reminds you to delete it after importing — but the handling between machines is on you.
So: move it over a channel you trust (a USB stick, scp, your password manager's secure note — not a public Slack channel or an email to yourself you will forget about), and delete it once the import is done. If you want defense in depth, the CLI can encrypt the bundle to a GPG key:
pc export --gpg you@example.com --output accounts.gpg
# ...then on the other side
gpg -d accounts.gpg | pc import /dev/stdin # or decrypt to a file firstAn encrypted bundle is safe to send over channels a plaintext one is not.
What actually moves
The bundle is everything Power Claude needs to reconstruct the pool: each account's saved profile (the OAuth credentials) plus the name-to-email lookup that keeps identities straight. Importing applies the same safety rules as adding an account by hand — it refuses path-unsafe names, and it skips any account that already belongs to a different profile or a different Power Claude home (so importing your laptop's pool into your desktop won't create phantom duplicates that corrupt rotation). Your existing local accounts are never clobbered or dropped.
After you import
The new accounts appear in the dashboard right away. For the rotating proxy to start using them, restart it or run pc rotate once. From there it is the same pool you had on the other machine — same rotation, same forecasting, same routing.
Frequently asked questions
Where is the exported file written, and is it safe on disk?
Wherever you choose. Power Claude writes it with owner-only permissions (0600), so other users on the machine cannot read it — but the contents are your login credentials in clear text, so still treat the file itself as a secret and delete it after importing.
Will importing overwrite the accounts I already have on this machine?
No. Accounts that already exist (same login) are skipped, and your existing name-to-email mappings are preserved, not replaced. Choose "Skip Duplicates" (or pass --dedup) to also skip any whose email matches a different local profile.
Can I export from the CLI and import in the VS Code extension?
Yes. Both surfaces share one implementation and one file format, so a bundle made on either side imports cleanly on the other.
Do I need to re-login to each account after importing?
No — that is the whole point. The credentials travel inside the bundle, so the imported accounts are ready to rotate without a browser login per account.
How do I move accounts without leaving credentials in clear text?
Use the CLI's GPG option: pc export --gpg <key> --output accounts.gpg produces an encrypted bundle you decrypt on the other side before importing.
Does this work for backups too?
Yes. The same export is a point-in-time backup of your pool — run it before risky operations like a mass re-login or an uninstall, and restore with import if anything goes sideways.
Closing
Pooling accounts gives you capacity; portability makes that pool yours to carry. Set it up once, export it, and the next machine is a thirty-second import instead of an afternoon of browser logins.