CCA-F Certification Prep · lesson 2 of 10
CCA-F Study Plan
A four-phase plan that maps the Anthropic Academy courses to vault notes and hands-on practice.
Phase 1 — Orient (1–2 days)
Goal: know what's being tested.
- Read cca-f-exam-overview.
- Skim the five domain notes:
- Read cca-scenarios — be able to name all six.
Outcome: you can recite the domains and weights.
Phase 2 — Foundations (3–5 days)
Goal: be fluent with the Claude API and Claude Code primitives.
Watch / complete:
- Claude 101 (skip if already comfortable with claude.ai).
- Building with the Claude API ← biggest cert-prep value.
- Claude Code in Action.
Reinforce with notes:
- messages-api, system-prompts, tool-use, streaming, multi-turn-conversations, prompt-caching, extended-thinking, structured-output, few-shot-prompting, rag-patterns, batch-api.
- claude-code-overview, claude-code-md, claude-code-settings, claude-code-slash-commands, claude-code-hooks, claude-code-plan-mode.
Hands-on:
- Build a tiny tool-use loop end to end (e.g., a weather + calendar agent).
- Use Claude Code on your own repo with a real
CLAUDE.mdand a custom slash command. - Add one
PostToolUsehook that auto-runs your linter.
Phase 3 — Specialize (5–7 days)
Goal: deep on MCP, subagents, agentic patterns.
Watch / complete:
- Introduction to Model Context Protocol.
- MCP: Advanced Topics.
- Introduction to Agent Skills.
- Introduction to Subagents.
Reinforce with notes:
- mcp-overview, mcp-tools, mcp-resources, mcp-prompts, mcp-server-python, mcp-transports, mcp-trust-config, mcp-advanced.
- tool-design-principles, error-handling-in-tools.
- agent-skills, subagents, agent-sdk, agentic-patterns.
Hands-on:
- Build a small MCP server (Python or TS) with one tool, one resource, one prompt.
- Wire it into Claude Code via
.mcp.json. - Write a skill that solves a recurring task you have.
- Define an
Exploresubagent in.claude/agents/explore.mdand use it.
Phase 4 — Drill (3–5 days)
Goal: reflexive pattern matching on scenarios.
- Walk through every scenario in cca-scenarios. For each:
- Sketch the canonical architecture in your own words.
- List the trade-offs.
- Name three common pitfalls (=> distractor answers).
- Take community practice tests (claudecertifications.com, certsafari.com, daronyondem study guide) — track which domains you miss.
- Re-read cheatsheet daily.
Phase 5 — Test
- Schedule the proctored exam on Skilljar.
- Day-of: sleep, water, calm. The exam is 2 hours and you can flag and review.
- Read each question twice. The "obvious" answer is usually the wrong one on a single trade-off.
Time budget
- Minimum viable: ~30–40 hours over 2 weeks.
- Comfortable: 60–80 hours over 4 weeks, including hands-on builds.
Resources
- Anthropic Academy: https://anthropic.skilljar.com/
- Community study guide: https://github.com/daronyondem/claude-architect-exam-guide
- Free practice questions: https://www.certsafari.com/anthropic
- Anthropic's "Building Effective Agents" blog post
- Anthropic's prompt engineering docs