My New Tool for Taming Claude Code Configurations

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I’ve been living in the Claude Code CLI lately. It’s a powerful workflow, but it has a glaring friction point: managing connections.

If you’re like me, you bounce between the official Claude subscription and other providers like Z.ai. The standard way to handle this involves exporting environment variables, editing shell profiles, and constantly restarting terminal sessions to make the changes stick. It’s tedious, and it breaks my flow.

I wanted a way to swap contexts without touching a command line or messing with my .bashrc. So, I built Claude Code EZ Switch.

Today marks the v1.0 Stable Release. Here is why I built it and how it differs from other tools out there.

A Simpler, Focused Alternative to Claude Code Router

If you’ve looked for solutions to this problem, you might have found Claude Code Router. That project is excellent—it’s a robust traffic manager that acts as a local proxy server to route your requests.

But for my needs, running a local proxy server was overkill. I didn't need to intercept traffic; I just needed to update my configuration.

EZ Switch is the "lite" alternative.

• No background processes: It doesn't run a server. It’s just a configuration editor.

• GUI-first: It replaces command-line flags with a simple visual dashboard.

• Z.ai Optimized: It is purpose-built to handle Z.ai’s specific API requirements out of the box.

Think of Router as a traffic cop, and EZ Switch as a remote control. If you want deep architectural control, use Router. If you just want to click "Z.ai" and get back to coding, EZ Switch is likely a better fit.

A Cleaner Approach: Settings.json Only

The biggest technical improvement in v1.0 is how it talks to Claude.

In the alpha versions, the app modified system environment variables. This was messy—it polluted the shell environment and often required a terminal restart to take effect.

I’ve scrapped that approach. The app now interacts exclusively with Claude Code’s internal file: ~/.claude/settings.json.

This offers two distinct advantages:

1. Isolation: It never touches your system, terminal, or shell config. It only touches Claude.

2. Speed: You don't need to restart your terminal or source your profile. Just apply the config in the app and restart the Claude Code extension/session.

Granular Control for Z.ai Users

The main reason I built this was to get better performance out of Z.ai without the manual setup.

Claude Code uses three tiers: Opus (complex), Sonnet (balanced), and Haiku (fast). Mapping these to Z.ai’s GLM models manually is annoying.

I added an Advanced Model Selection panel directly into the UI. You can now mix and match explicitly:

• Complex Tasks: Force the Opus tier to use GLM-4.6.

• Quick Tasks: Force the Haiku tier to use GLM-4.5-Air.

This lets you balance cost and logic capabilities without looking up model strings every time.

Curious About Z.ai?

If you haven't tried Z.ai yet, you might be wondering why I prioritized it in this tool.

Essentially, Z.ai gives you access to the GLM model family, which is surprisingly potent for coding workflows.

• GLM-4.6 is their heavy hitter. In my testing, it handles complex reasoning and architectural questions on par with the top-tier models we're used to.

• GLM-4.5-Air is the opposite—it’s optimized for extreme speed and low latency, making it perfect for quick syntax checks or simple refactors.

If you want to give their GLM Code Plan a shot, you can use my link below to get 10% off.

👉 Get 10% off Z.ai GLM Code Plan

Installation (Yes, there is an .exe)

I didn't want this to be another Python script you have to debug before using.

• Windows: I’ve compiled a standalone .exe. You don't need Python installed. Just download and run.

• Mac/Linux: The standard Python source is available and lightweight.

You can grab the release below.

Download v1.0 on GitHub

Let me know if it helps your workflow.

– Ray