RonanCodes/context

context — credential profile switching

ro context is the meta-CLI all other ronan-skills lean on for credential discovery. The actual script lives at skills/context/scripts/ro (in this repo) and is symlinked into ~/.local/bin/ro so it's invokable from any terminal as ro context ….

This SKILL.md is the user-facing documentation. The script's --help is the canonical command reference.

Quick answers

| Question | Command | |---|---| | What context am I in right now? | ro context show | | Why this context (which rule fired)? | ro context where | | Which env file did the resolver pick? | ro context env | | Which contexts exist? | ro context list | | Switch context for the rest of my session | ro context use <name> | | Stop pinning, go back to cwd-resolution | ro context auto | | First-time setup | ro context init | | Add a cwd-glob auto-rule | ro context add-rule '~/Github-Acme/**' acme |

Resolution chain (highest priority first)

1. $RO_CONTEXT env var — one-shot per shell, never written to disk.
2. contexts.json:active — manual override set by ro context use. Sticky until cleared by ro context auto.
3. .ro-context.local in cwd or any ancestor — gitignored contributor override.
4. .ro-context in cwd or any ancestor — committed, repo's declared context. Recommended default for any repo with a stable owner/account.
5. cwd-glob rule in contexts.json — e.g. ~/Github-Acme/** → acme.
6. default in contexts.json — fallback.

The "ancestor" walk goes up to $HOME and stops there, never above.

How skills use this

Every skill that needs API tokens does:

set -a; source "$(ro context env)"; set +a

$(ro context env) returns the absolute path of the env file the resolver picked. For single-context users that's always ~/.claude/.env.personal; for multi-context users it varies per cwd.

Backwards compat: ~/.claude/.env is still a symlink to whichever context was last ro context use'd. Skills that haven't migrated to $(ro context env) keep working unchanged.

State layout

Everything under ~/.claude/ (no split with ~/.config/):

~/.claude/
  contexts.json         # { default, active, rules: [[glob, name], ...] }
  .env                  # symlink, kept for backwards compat
  .env.personal         # real file per context (mode 600)
  .env.<other>          # one per profile

Onboarding a new context

# 1. Copy the personal template as a starting point
cp ~/.claude/.env.personal ~/.claude/.env.acme
chmod 600 ~/.claude/.env.acme
# …edit with the client's credentials…

# 2. Pin a repo to its context (preferred — committed, no global config needed)
echo acme > /path/to/acme/repo/.ro-context

# OR add a cwd-glob auto-rule
ro context add-rule '~/Github-Acme/**' acme

Failure modes the design handles

| If you… | Resolution | |---|---| | Forget to switch context, open a terminal in a Simplicity repo | .ro-context resolves automatically | | Clone a new repo from a client without thinking | cwd-glob (~/Github-<Client>/**) catches it | | Have overlapping repos in ~/Dev/ (work + personal side-by-side) | Each repo's own .ro-context wins over the glob | | Want to test cross-account scripts | RO_CONTEXT=other-account env var for one shell | | Want to "stay in" one context for a long-running session | ro context use <name> until ro context auto | | Have a long-running process (dev server, Claude session) | The process holds whatever it was started with — symlink swap doesn't poke it. Restart needed |

See also

• [[ro-context-env-profiles]] (LLM wiki research vault) — the design rationale + pull-out checklist
• ~/.claude/contexts.json — the user's actual rules + default
• scripts/ro (this skill) — the implementation, ~320 lines of bash, zero dependencies beyond bash + jq + awk + sed