Claude Certified Architect Foundations: Crash Course
Pass the CCA-F Exam in a Weekend. The 5 Domains Boiled Down, the Judgment Patterns Decoded, and One Realistic Mock.
Your CCA-F exam is days away and you haven't started. This is the weekend boil-down: all five domains compressed to what's actually tested, the five judgment patterns that crack the questions where four answers all sound right, a Top-20 recall card you photograph the morning of, and one realistic, domain-weighted 60-question mock that hands you a go-or-no-go verdict before you spend your one $99 attempt. Friday you map the whole exam onto one page. Saturday you boil each domain and build your card. Sunday you sit the mock under the clock and fix only what's weak. Monday you walk in calm.
The CCA-F is a scenario-judgment exam, not a recall test — and the crammer’s problem isn’t time, it’s knowing what’s actually tested. This is the weekend boil-down: all five domains compressed to what the exam asks, the five judgment patterns that crack the trick questions, a Top-20 card you photograph the morning of, and one realistic, domain-weighted mock that ends in a go-or-no-go verdict. It’s the review companion to the Claude Certified Architect Foundations study guide and the 500+ practice-question drill — the last thing you read before you sit the $99 exam.
What You'll Build
The one sentence that decides the exam: you can know every domain and still fail on exam-craft.
The whole exam on a card: the format, the 27/20/20/18/15 domain weights, and where the points actually live.
The five recognition patterns that crack the questions where every option looks defensible.
The heaviest domain, boiled down: read stop_reason not the sentence, and constrain before you add another agent.
CLAUDE.md scopes concatenate, they don't override — plus the config myths the exam plants as distractors.
Instruct or enforce: when a prompt is the trap and a schema, tool, or hook is the answer.
Two transports, not three: the SSE decoy, the two error channels, and the tool-boundary do/don't.
The domain that fails you silently: assert against real state, never trust an agent's 'done'.
The Top-20 recall card, grouped by domain in attack order, sized to photograph on your phone.
One timed, domain-weighted 60-question mock — then read the shape of your misses, not just the score.
The proctoring survival page: stack the deck, the morning-of ritual, and the ambushes to pre-load.
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