The Claude Certified Architect – Foundations exam tests whether you can make sound trade-off decisions when building real systems with Claude Code, the Claude Agent SDK, the Claude API and the Model Context Protocol (MCP). This lesson breaks down exactly how the exam is built so you study the right things.
📋 Exam format
| Exam code | CCAR-F |
|---|---|
| Items | 60 — multiple-choice and multiple-response (each item says how many to pick) |
| Structure | 4 scenarios drawn at random from a bank of 6 |
| Time | 120 minutes (≈ 2 minutes per item) |
| Passing score | Scaled 720 on 100–1,000 |
| Fee | $125 (partner tiers Select/Preferred/Global Premier get discounts) |
| Validity | 12 months |
📊 The five domains and their weights
| # | Domain | Weight | ≈ items |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Agentic Architecture & Orchestration | 27% | 16 |
| 2 | Tool Design & MCP Integration | 18% | 11 |
| 3 | Claude Code Configuration & Workflows | 20% | 12 |
| 4 | Prompt Engineering & Structured Output | 20% | 12 |
| 5 | Context Management & Reliability | 15% | 9 |
Modules 2–6 of this course map one-to-one onto these domains.
❔ How questions are written
Every question sits inside a realistic production scenario and asks you to choose the best action — the root-cause fix, the most effective first step, or the design that guarantees a requirement. Three habits will carry you through most items:
- Find the root cause first. Distractors usually fix a different problem.
- Prefer the proportionate fix. “First step” questions want the cheap, high-leverage change (better tool descriptions, explicit criteria) before new infrastructure (classifiers, routing layers).
- Code beats prompts when it must not fail. Money, identity and compliance need hooks and gates, not “please remember to…”.
📝 Registration in four steps
- Sign in to Anthropic Partner Academy with your partner work email.
- Open the Architect – Foundations certification page and pay at checkout.
- Follow the emailed Pearson link and create your Pearson account (name must match your ID).
- Schedule OnVUE or a test centre. Run Pearson’s system test before an online exam.
🔌 What is out of scope
The official guide lists topics that will not appear. Don’t burn study time on: fine-tuning or training models; API billing, keys, OAuth; hosting MCP servers; model internals, RLHF, Constitutional AI; embeddings and vector-database internals; computer use; vision; streaming/SSE implementation; rate limits and pricing maths; cloud-provider configuration; benchmarks; prompt-caching details beyond knowing it exists; tokenisation.
🧪 Exam-Style Practice Questions
Try these before opening the answers. They use the same scenario style as the real exam.
Question 1. In a hub-and-spoke research system, why does all subagent communication go through the coordinator?
- A. The SDK forbids subagents from having tools
- B. It cuts token use to zero
- C. It gives observability, consistent error handling and controlled information flow
- D. Subagents can't run concurrently otherwise
Show answer
Answer: C. Central routing lets you see, handle and control everything. D: parallelism comes from multiple Task calls. B: it doesn't remove token cost. A: false.
Question 2. The system prompt says "Whenever a user mentions 'account', call get_customer." Users asking about "account of the incident" trigger wrong calls. What's the problem?
- A. The tool schema is invalid
- B. Temperature is too high
- C. The model is too small
- D. Keyword-sensitive system-prompt instructions are overriding well-written tool descriptions
Show answer
Answer: D. Review prompts for keyword triggers that create unintended associations. C, A and B don't explain keyword-driven misfires.
Question 3. Severity labels are inconsistent across runs. What helps most?
- A. Define each severity level with concrete code examples
- B. Increase the temperature
- C. Use only two levels
- D. Ask Claude to be consistent
Show answer
Answer: A. Concrete anchors give consistent classification. D is vague. C loses information without fixing the ambiguity. B makes it worse.
📝 Assignment
Do these tasks in order. Each one has a Done when check, so you know when it is complete. The stretch task is optional but close to what the exam expects from an architect. Keep your answers in one notes file or Git repository, and revisit them in your final week of revision together with the cheat sheet in the last lesson of this course.
- Task 1: Download the official CCAR-F exam guide from Anthropic Partner Academy and read sections 4–6.
✅ Done when: You can list all five domains with their weights from memory and say which one carries the most items. - Task 2: Rate yourself 1–5 on each of the five domains and note your two weakest.
✅ Done when: Your ratings table has all five domains scored, and your two weakest domains are linked to the matching modules of this course. - Stretch: work out how many minutes you can spend per scenario if you keep 10 minutes for review.
✅ Done when: Your time plan adds up to 120 minutes and leaves at least 8 minutes for flagged questions.
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
🤔 How many questions are on the Claude Architect Foundations exam?
Sixty multiple-choice and multiple-response items, presented as four scenarios drawn from a bank of six, in 120 minutes.
🤔 Which domain carries the most weight?
Agentic Architecture & Orchestration at 27%, followed by Claude Code Configuration and Prompt Engineering at 20% each.
🤔 Is computer use or vision tested on CCAR-F?
No. The official guide lists computer use, vision, streaming implementation, fine-tuning and pricing maths as out of scope.
🤔 Can I reschedule the exam?
Yes, through Pearson. The exam guide says up to 24 hours before, while the FAQ says 48 hours, so reschedule at least 48 hours ahead to be safe.
🏁 Summary
- 60 items, 4 scenarios, 120 minutes, scaled 720 to pass.
- Domain 1 (agentic architecture) is the heaviest at 27% — master it.
- Most wrong answers fix a different problem, over-engineer a first step, or trust prompts where code is required.
Next, continue with The 6 CCAR-F Exam Scenarios Explained.
Independent study material by SQA Tools. Not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Anthropic. Claude is a trademark of Anthropic. Mock questions are original practice items, not real exam content. Exam facts checked against Anthropic's official exam guides and certification FAQ on 11 November 2026.