Master the Claude Certified Architect Foundations Exam
Free, comprehensive study guides, exam domain breakdowns, practice questions, and a 12-week preparation plan. Everything you need to pass Anthropic's first official technical certification.
in-depth guides
Exam Domains
with explanations
Practice Questions
structured plan
Study Weeks
walkthroughs
Exam Scenarios
What is the Claude Certified Architect – Foundations?
Anthropic's first official technical certification, designed for solution architects building production applications with Claude. This is not a general AI literacy badge — it validates real implementation expertise across agentic architecture, tool integration, and production deployment.
Production-Grade Credential
Validates your ability to architect production applications with Claude, not just casual prompting or basic API usage.
Partner Network Integration
Launched alongside the Claude Partner Network, giving certified architects commercial credibility in the Anthropic ecosystem.
Career Differentiator
As the first Claude certification, early adopters gain significant advantage in the rapidly growing AI architecture job market.
5 Exam Domains You Must Master
The certification covers five core domains spanning agentic systems, tool integration, Claude Code workflows, prompt engineering, and production reliability.
Domain 1: Agentic Architecture
Design and implement agentic systems using Claude's Agent SDK. Covers agentic loops, multi-agent orchestration, hooks, workflows, session management, and task decomposition patterns for production-grade AI applications.
Domain 2: Tool Design & MCP
Design effective tools and integrate with Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers. Covers tool description best practices, structured error responses, tool distribution, MCP configuration, and Claude's built-in tools.
Domain 3: Claude Code Config
Configure Claude Code for development workflows. Covers CLAUDE.md hierarchy, custom commands and skills, plan mode, iterative refinement, CI/CD integration, and batch processing.
Domain 4: Prompt Engineering
Master prompt engineering techniques for production systems. Covers explicit criteria, few-shot prompting, tool_use for structured output, JSON schema design, validation-retry loops, and multi-pass review strategies.
Domain 5: Context & Reliability
Manage context effectively in production systems. Covers progressive summarization risks, context positioning, escalation patterns, error propagation, context degradation, human review, and information provenance.
Ready to Start?
Dive deep into all 5 domains with our comprehensive study materials.
Explore All Domains6 Real-World Exam Scenarios
The exam tests your knowledge through practical scenarios. You'll face 4 of these 6 scenarios, each requiring you to make architectural decisions for production Claude applications.
Customer Support Resolution Agent
Design an AI-powered customer support agent that handles inquiries, resolves issues, and escalates complex cases. Tests Agent SDK usage, MCP tools, and escalation logic.
Code Generation with Claude Code
Configure Claude Code for a development team workflow. Tests CLAUDE.md configuration, plan mode, slash commands, and iterative refinement strategies.
Multi-Agent Research System
Build a coordinator-subagent system for parallel research tasks. Tests multi-agent orchestration, context passing, error propagation, and result synthesis.
Developer Productivity with Claude
Build developer tools using the Claude Agent SDK with built-in tools and MCP servers. Tests tool selection, codebase exploration, and code generation workflows.
Claude Code for CI/CD
Integrate Claude Code into continuous integration and delivery pipelines. Tests -p flag usage, structured output, batch API, and multi-pass code review.
Structured Data Extraction
Build a structured data extraction pipeline from unstructured documents. Tests JSON schemas, tool_use, validation-retry loops, and few-shot prompting.
12-Week Study Plan to Certification
Our structured 12-week plan takes you from zero to exam-ready with just 1 hour per day. Three phases cover foundations, applied knowledge, and exam preparation with weekly practice tests.
Foundations (Weeks 1–4)
Agentic loops, multi-agent systems, hooks, tool design & MCP
Applied Knowledge (Weeks 5–8)
Claude Code config, CI/CD, prompt engineering, validation
Exam Prep (Weeks 9–12)
Context management, hands-on exercises, practice exams
Key Anti-Patterns to Know
These frequently appear as wrong answers on the exam. Memorize them:
- 01Parsing natural language for loop termination instead of checking stop_reason
- 02Prompt-based enforcement for critical business rules (use hooks)
- 03Same-session self-review (retains reasoning bias)
- 04Too many tools per agent (18 vs 4-5 degrades selection)
- 05Sentiment-based escalation (sentiment ≠ complexity)
- 06Aggregate accuracy metrics masking per-document-type failures
Everything You Need — Completely Free
5 domain guides, 12 practice questions, a 12-week study plan, and 6 scenario walkthroughs — all based on Anthropic's official exam materials.
No signup. No paywall. Open to everyone.