Most git clients conflate “who am I signed in as” with “who am I committing as.” GitLane splits them into two independent nouns, because they answer different questions and get the wrong answer in different ways.
| Accounts | Identities | |
|---|---|---|
| Answer the question | Who authenticates? | Who authored this? |
| Used for | Clone, fetch, pull, push, PR APIs | The commit’s author and committer |
| Stored in | The HTTPS remote URL / OS keychain / gh |
The repository’s local git config |
| Scope | Per remote | Per repository |
They do not feed each other. Signing into an account never prefills an identity, and picking an identity never changes how you authenticate.
Accounts
Sign into several GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket accounts at once, then pick which one each remote uses.
The binding is stored git-natively: the account becomes the username in the
HTTPS remote URL, written via git remote set-url and read back from the
remote list. Credential helpers resolve by that username
(see gitcredentials(7)), so the exact same choice applies when you use the
repository from a terminal. SSH remotes pick their account by key instead.
How the credential itself is supplied depends on the remote:
- GitHub remotes can inject
gh auth git-credentialper invocation. - GitLab, Bitbucket, Azure Repos, and unknown HTTPS remotes use your configured git credential helper or GCM.
- GitLane-owned tokens are stored in your OS keychain and fed to git through a credential bridge, so the token never crosses into the frontend.
A repository is fully usable — commit, fetch, push — with no account connected at all.
Two distinct sign-out verbs
Identities
An identity card is a reusable entry: a name, an email, and optionally a GPG or SSH signing key. Applying one writes it to the open repository’s local git config — never the global one.
This is what stops you committing to a client repository with your personal email, or pushing an unsigned commit to a repository that expects verification. The pin travels with the repository, not with your session.
Cards are reusable across repositories, and a card can carry a per-repository custom email override. If you pin nothing, GitLane commits as “this computer” — your global git config, exactly like a terminal.
The repository’s Identity panel is one freely editable name/email card with your saved cards as presets. Its only prefill is “adopt the repository’s current git-config identity as a card” — derived from git config, never from an account.
Where to find both
Settings → Accounts and Settings → Identities, grouped together under Accounts & identities.