How to Keep One Junction Account Clean When Machines Come and Go

Daemon Hygiene Is Account Hygiene

Junction can connect to multiple daemons, but every daemon should have a reason to exist. Laptops get replaced. VPS instances move. Workstations change owners. Side-project machines become work machines. If you do not maintain the list, your account becomes harder to operate.

Clean account hygiene means you can answer three questions quickly:

• What machines are connected?
• What work belongs on each one?
• Which daemons are safe to use today?

That clarity matters more as Claude Code and Codex sessions become longer, more parallel, or more automated.

This is a lifecycle article, not a routing article. The focus is what happens after machines have been added: renames, retirements, ownership changes, stale auth, and old automation routes.

Name Machines By Purpose

Use daemon names that explain the role:

nick-macbook-personal
team-vps-switchboard
frontend-workstation
api-build-box

Avoid names that only make sense the day you created them:

new-vps
test2
blue
fast-machine

The name should help you pick the right execution host from a phone. If the name does not help routing, rename it or retire it.

Keep A Machine Inventory

For each daemon, track:

• Owner.
• Machine type.
• Repositories it should run.
• Provider authentication status.
• GitHub account or organization.
• Whether it is allowed for Switchboard.
• Whether it is always on.
• Last known purpose.

This can live in a team doc, a repo note, or your own operations checklist. The format is less important than the habit.

Retire Old Daemons Deliberately

When a machine is no longer used, remove it from the active workflow. Do not leave stale daemons around because they might be useful later.

Retirement checklist:

• Stop any active sessions.
• Archive important run history if needed.
• Confirm no Switchboard route points to the daemon.
• Remove or rotate credentials that should not remain.
• Delete old repository checkouts if the machine is being repurposed.
• Update your inventory and naming conventions.

The risk of stale daemons is not just clutter. It is accidentally routing work to an old environment with stale dependencies, wrong Git identity, or old provider settings.

If the daemon was used for Switchboard, retirement should also include a route audit. An automation route pointing at a retired machine is worse than a broken shortcut because it can fail later, when nobody remembers the machine existed.

Watch For Role Drift

Role drift happens when a daemon gradually becomes something else:

• A personal laptop starts running work repos.
• A docs VPS starts running backend migrations.
• A temporary test machine becomes a permanent automation host.
• A workstation with one repo becomes a general-purpose queue.

Role drift is not always bad, but it should be intentional. If the machine""'s role changes, update its name, auth, repo list, and routing policy.

Treat role drift like a small migration. Rename the daemon, confirm provider auth, verify Git identity, and run one low-risk session before trusting it with normal work again.

Use Plan Limits As Signals

Junction Free includes one saved daemon connection and two open chats. That is a good forcing function when your workflow is simple. If you need several machines saved and active, the workflow has moved beyond the Free shape.

Core supports unlimited daemons and open chats. That does not mean you should connect every machine you own. It means you can keep the machines that matter without fighting plan limits.

Switchboard adds Linear automation. Any machine used for Switchboard deserves stricter hygiene because automation can keep running when you are not watching the terminal.

A Monthly Review Routine

Once a month, review your connected machines:

1. Which daemons were used recently?
2. Which daemons have active or archived work worth preserving?
3. Which machines changed purpose?
4. Which auth state should be refreshed?
5. Which routes point to each daemon?
6. Which daemon should be removed?

This takes only a few minutes when the account is small. It prevents confusion later.

Example: Retiring A Work Laptop

You replace a work laptop that has a Junction daemon, two work repos, Claude Code auth, Codex auth, and GitHub CLI login.

Before returning it, stop the daemon, archive sessions that matter, confirm no Switchboard route points to that machine, remove credentials, and update your account naming. Then set up the new laptop as a new daemon instead of pretending it is the same environment.

That clean break avoids stale state and unclear review history.

The same pattern applies to temporary cloud machines. If a VPS was created for a sprint, retire it at the end of the sprint instead of leaving it as a mysterious extra daemon in the account.

Tradeoffs

Account hygiene is operational work. It does not feel as productive as launching another agent. But the cost of a messy daemon list shows up later: wrong machine, wrong repo, wrong branch, wrong credentials.

The habit matters most for teams. A solo developer can remember a lot. A team needs the system to be legible without memory.

Where Junction Fits

Junction""'s multi-daemon model lets you manage local agents across machines from one browser surface. That flexibility is powerful when the machine list is clean.

If you are starting with more than one daemon, read How to Manage Multiple AI Coding Agents Across Machines. If one saved daemon is no longer enough, compare plan limits on the pricing page.