Grant a Session Budget Top-Up
A developer is close to finishing a task but about to hit their session's spend cap. Grant them a one-time top-up scoped to that session only — no change to their team or org budget.
When to use this
Use a session budget top-up when a developer needs a bit more headroom to finish what they're doing right now, and the extra spend shouldn't carry forward into future sessions or months. For a durable, month-over-month increase to a team or user's rolling cap instead, see Set a Budget → Exceptions — that's a different mechanism with different durability, and approving one never affects the other.
Worked example
A developer's active session has a $20 budget and they're at $19.50 with one more large tool call to make. They ask for $10 more to finish the task.
- The developer submits the request (from Claude Code or the Builder Portal, or by asking their admin to submit it on their behalf) with the amount and a short justification.
- You review it in Security → Approvals — the request shows the target session, the requesting developer, and the requested amount ($10.00).
- Click Approve. The session's budget becomes $30 immediately (20 + 10) — the developer's next call is evaluated against the new cap right away.
The $10 applies to this one session only. When the session ends, the top-up doesn't carry over — a new session starts at the developer's normal budget. Nothing reverts automatically and no cleanup is needed; the bump simply doesn't apply again.
Denying a request
Click Deny instead of Approve in the same Approvals view. The developer is notified and the session's budget is unchanged — they can submit a new request with updated justification if needed.
A duplicate or repeated approval on the same request never double-applies the top-up — approving an already-approved request is a no-op.