Claude Certified Architect (CCA) — Exam Study Notes

Parts

1. Part 1

   Study Dashboard & Exam Overview

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

   3 min read

2. Part 2

   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.

   2 min read

3. Part 3

   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.

   12 min read

4. Part 4

   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.

   9 min read

5. Part 5

   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.

   9 min read

6. Part 6

   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.

   9 min read

7. Part 7

   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.

   10 min read

8. Part 8

   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.

   3 min read

9. Part 9

   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.

   3 min read

10. Part 10

    Scenario: Multi-Agent Research System

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

    4 min read

11. Part 11

    Scenario: Developer Productivity with Claude

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

    4 min read

12. Part 12

    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.

    4 min read

13. Part 13

    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.

    4 min read

14. Part 14

    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.

    15 min read

15. Part 15

    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.

    13 min read

16. Part 16

    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.

    11 min read