Claude Architect Lab

Certification Overview

A summary of Anthropic's Claude Certified Architect – Foundations exam, kept in sync with src/lib/exam-blueprint.ts. This page is a study aid, not the exam — for registration, current eligibility requirements, and the authoritative syllabus, see Anthropic Academy.

Anthropic's own certification page doesn't publish a short abbreviation for the exam — third-party prep resources use both “CCA-F” and “CCAR-F,” inconsistently, so this site spells out the full name rather than picking one.

Registration currently runs through Anthropic's Partner Academy platform — access may be limited (a partner-organization email may be required). Check Anthropic Academy for current eligibility before assuming open registration.

Exam format

Questions
60
Minutes
120
Price
$125
Passing score
720/1000

Domain weights

  • 1. Agentic Architecture27%
  • 2. Tool Design & MCP18%
  • 3. Claude Code20%
  • 4. Prompt Engineering20%
  • 5. Context & Reliability15%

The five domains

  • 1. Agentic Architecture & Orchestration

    27%

    Agent loops, agent vs. deterministic workflow, single- vs. multi-agent design, delegation and subagents, parallelization, human-in-the-loop, stopping conditions, and the reliability trade-offs each choice carries.

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  • 2. Tool Design & MCP Integration

    18%

    MCP clients and servers, tools vs. resources vs. prompts, tool schema design, permissions and boundaries, authentication, error handling, and designing safe MCP integrations.

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  • 3. Claude Code Configuration & Workflows

    20%

    CLAUDE.md and project instructions, permissions, hooks, commands and skills, MCP inside Claude Code, context management, and development workflows.

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  • 4. Prompt Engineering & Structured Output

    20%

    System and user prompts, few-shot examples, structured (XML/JSON/schema) prompting, tool-use prompting, validation and retries, and separating deterministic application logic from model reasoning.

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  • 5. Context Management & Reliability

    15%

    Context windows, context engineering, summarization and compaction, retrieval, caching, error handling and retries, observability, evaluations, and production reliability.

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Anthropic's recommended prep

Anthropic Academy recommends these courses to prepare for the exam. This site is a companion for practicing architecture judgment, not a replacement for them.

  • AI Fluency
  • Claude 101
  • Building with the Claude API
  • Claude with Amazon Bedrock
  • Claude on Google Cloud
  • Introduction to MCP
  • Claude Code in Action