Claude Certified Architect: Foundations Exam Guide - 2026

About this course

The Claude Certified Architect (CCA) Foundations certification validates your ability to design, build, and operate production-grade systems with Claude — from autonomous agents and multi-agent orchestration to MCP tools, Claude Code workflows, prompt engineering, and context management. This course is your complete, hands-on guide to mastering every objective on the exam and applying those skills to real projects.Rather than abstract theory, the course is built around practical, step-by-step lessons and demos. You will see exactly how each concept works, with copy-paste-ready prompts and real-world examples you can reuse in your own work. By the end, you will understand not just what to do, but why architects make the design decisions they do.Here is what the course covers, organized by the five exam domains:Domain 1 — Agentic Architecture and Orchestration: Design agentic loops, orchestrate coordinator–subagent systems, configure subagent invocation and context, build multi-step workflows with enforcement and handoffs, apply Agent SDK hooks, decompose complex tasks, and manage session state, resumption, and forking.Domain 2 — Tool Design and MCP Integration: Design effective tool interfaces and descriptions, return structured error responses, distribute tools across agents, configure tool choice, and integrate MCP servers into Claude Code.Domain 3 — Claude Code Configuration and Workflows: Configure CLAUDE memory files — hierarchy, scoping, and modularity — create scalable custom commands and Claude Skills, apply path-specific rules for conditional loading, choose between Plan Mode and direct execution, refine work iteratively, and wire Claude Code into CI/CD pipelines.Domain 4 — Prompt Engineering and Structured Output: Write high-precision prompts, use few-shot prompting, enforce structured output with JSON Schemas, build self-correcting extraction, master batch processing, and des