AI & Machine Learning

Claude Certified Architect (CCA) — Exam Study Notes

lex@lexgaines.com · 16 parts · 115 min total read time

These are my personal study notes for the Claude Certified Architect (CCA) — Foundations exam by Anthropic.

The CCA exam tests your ability to design and build production-quality systems with Claude — agentic loops, multi-agent coordination, tool design, MCP integration, prompt engineering, and Claude Code configuration. Every question is grounded in a realistic production scenario, testing tradeoff judgment rather than memorization.

This series covers all five exam domains, all six exam scenarios, worked sample questions with distractor analysis, hands-on preparation exercises, and a complete key concepts glossary. Use it as a structured study guide or a quick reference while building with Claude.

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Series Overview

Part 1 3 min read

Study Dashboard & Exam Overview

Your starting point for the CCA Foundations exam: domain weights, scenario overview, study strategy, and progress tracker.

Read Part 1

Part 2 2 min read

CCA Exam Reference: Technologies & Core Themes

A high-level meta-reference covering all core technologies tested on the CCA exam — Agent SDK, MCP, Claude Code CLI, and key cross-domain themes.

Read Part 2

Part 3 12 min read

Domain 1: Agentic Architecture & Orchestration (27%)

The largest CCA exam domain. Master agentic loops, multi-agent coordination, subagent configuration, workflow enforcement, SDK hooks, task decomposition, and session management.

Read Part 3

Part 4 9 min read

Domain 3: Claude Code Configuration & Workflows (20%)

Complete coverage of CLAUDE.md hierarchies, .claude/rules/ glob patterns, slash commands, skills, plan mode, CI/CD integration, and the Batch API.

Read Part 4

Part 5 9 min read

Domain 4: Prompt Engineering & Structured Output (20%)

JSON schema design, tool_use and tool_choice, few-shot examples, validation-retry loops, and multi-pass review architectures for the CCA exam.

Read Part 5

Part 6 9 min read

Domain 2: Tool Design & MCP Integration (18%)

Designing effective tool interfaces, structured error responses, tool distribution across agents, MCP server configuration, and built-in Claude Code tools.

Read Part 6

Part 7 10 min read

Domain 5: Context Management & Reliability (15%)

Managing conversation context across long interactions, error propagation in multi-agent systems, human review workflows, and provenance tracking during synthesis.

Read Part 7

Part 8 3 min read

Scenario: Customer Support Resolution Agent

Build a customer support agent with get_customer, lookup_order, process_refund, and escalate_to_human tools. Covers prerequisite gates, escalation criteria, and structured handoff protocols.

Read Part 8

Part 9 3 min read

Scenario: Code Generation with Claude Code

Using Claude Code for code generation workflows: plan mode for complex refactors, CLAUDE.md hierarchies, and slash commands for team automation.

Read Part 9

Part 10 4 min read

Scenario: Multi-Agent Research System

Design a coordinator-subagent research pipeline with parallel execution, structured output, error propagation, and provenance tracking across sources.

Read Part 10

Part 11 4 min read

Scenario: Developer Productivity with Claude

Applying Claude Code to developer workflows: iterative refinement, context management in large codebases, and team-scoped configuration patterns.

Read Part 11

Part 12 4 min read

Scenario: Claude Code for Continuous Integration

Integrating Claude Code into CI/CD pipelines using non-interactive mode, JSON output formatting, and the Batch API for cost-optimized asynchronous review.

Read Part 12

Part 13 4 min read

Scenario: Structured Data Extraction

Build a reliable data extraction pipeline with JSON schema design, validation-retry loops, few-shot examples for varied document formats, and confidence-based human review routing.

Read Part 13

Part 14 15 min read

Sample Questions & Distractor Analysis

12 worked exam questions with full distractor analysis. Each question covers a realistic production scenario with correct answer explanation and analysis of why each wrong answer fails.

Read Part 14

Part 15 13 min read

Hands-On Preparation Exercises

Four hands-on labs mapping to CCA exam domains: build a multi-tool agent, configure Claude Code for a team, implement a structured extraction pipeline, and design a multi-agent research system.

Read Part 15

Part 16 11 min read

Key Concepts & Glossary

Quick-reference guide to all major technologies and concepts on the CCA exam: Agent SDK, MCP, Claude Code, Claude API, Message Batches API, JSON Schema, and built-in tools.

Read Part 16

CCA Claude Anthropic AI certification exam prep