hamzafarooq/claude-certified-architect

This repository holds community-made study materials for the Claude Certified Architect: Foundations exam, a certification offered by Anthropic that tests your ability to make sound architectural decisions when building production systems using Claude. The exam is scenario-based, presenting real design problems and production failures, and asking you to identify the root cause and best fix. A passing score is 720 out of 1000. The main resource is a 64-question interactive practice exam built as a single HTML file. No installation is required: you can open it directly in a browser or visit a hosted version online. The exam covers the five domains weighted on the actual test: agentic system design, tool design and integration, Claude Code configuration, prompt engineering, and context management. Alongside the practice exam, the repo includes a cheat sheet for each domain. Each cheat sheet opens with three core rules that cover the majority of questions in that domain, then walks through specific mechanics and common exam traps. For example, the agentic architecture section explains why code-level enforcement should be used for failure modes with financial or security consequences rather than relying on instructions in a prompt. The prompt engineering section explains the difference between vague guidance and specific criteria that actually change model behavior. The study guide recommends reading the cheat sheet for a domain before attempting those questions in the practice exam, then reviewing any missed questions using the explanations the exam provides. The repo notes that if you already work with Claude regularly, the cheat sheets alone cover roughly 80 percent of what you need. All materials are MIT-licensed. The practice exam has no dependencies and requires no build step. Contributions are welcome via pull request using the question format described in the contributing guide.