# 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.

- Price: $12.99 (Kindle ebook)
- Level: Intermediate
- Pages: 216
- Best for: Cramming the CCA-F exam in a single weekend
- You finish with: All 5 domains boiled to a weekend, the 5 judgment patterns, a Top-20 card, and one realistic mock
- Series: Claude Certified Series, book 3 of 3
- Buy on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4gnoEbM
- Web page: https://youcanbuildthings.com/books/claude-architect-crash-course

## What you get

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.

## Chapters

1. Today Is Tuesday and You Haven't Started: The one sentence that decides the exam: you can know every domain and still fail on exam-craft.
2. The Exam in One Page: 60 Questions, 120 Minutes, One Shot: The whole exam on a card: the format, the 27/20/20/18/15 domain weights, and where the points actually live.
3. Four Answers That All Sound Right: The 5 Judgment Patterns: The five recognition patterns that crack the questions where every option looks defensible.
4. Domain 1: Agentic Architecture & Orchestration (27%): The heaviest domain, boiled down: read stop_reason not the sentence, and constrain before you add another agent.
5. Domain 2: Claude Code Configuration (20%): CLAUDE.md scopes concatenate, they don't override. Plus the config myths the exam plants as distractors.
6. Domain 3: Prompt Engineering & Structured Output (20%): Instruct or enforce: when a prompt is the trap and a schema, tool, or hook is the answer.
7. Domain 4: Tool Design & MCP (18%): Two transports, not three: the SSE decoy, the two error channels, and the tool-boundary do/don't.
8. Domain 5: Context & Reliability (15%): The domain that fails you silently: assert against real state, never trust an agent's 'done'.
9. If You Only Memorize 20 Things, Memorize These: The Top-20 recall card, grouped by domain in attack order, sized to photograph on your phone.
10. Your One Realistic Mock: Are You Actually Ready?: One timed, domain-weighted 60-question mock, then read the shape of your misses, not just the score.
11. Exam Day: Don't Lose Your One Shot to a Proctoring Flag: The proctoring survival page: stack the deck, the morning-of ritual, and the ambushes to pre-load.

## Free guides from this book

- [Claude Structured Outputs: Guaranteed-Valid JSON](https://youcanbuildthings.com/articles/claude-structured-outputs.md): Claude structured outputs guarantee schema-valid JSON with constrained decoding. When to enforce vs instruct, the parameter, and the one thing it can't fix.
- [Don't Get Flagged: CCA-F Exam Proctoring Survival](https://youcanbuildthings.com/articles/claude-certified-architect-exam-proctoring.md): Claude Certified Architect exam proctoring can void your one $99 attempt over an innocent habit. The clean-room setup and the two moves that flag you.
- [MCP Transport Types: stdio, Streamable HTTP, and SSE](https://youcanbuildthings.com/articles/mcp-transport-types.md): MCP transport types come down to two current choices: stdio for local servers, Streamable HTTP for production. SSE is deprecated. Here's which to pick when.
- [The 7 Claude API stop_reason Values, and How to Handle Each](https://youcanbuildthings.com/articles/claude-api-stop-reason-values.md): The Claude API stop_reason values tell you why a response stopped. All seven, the handler each one needs, and the three people forget in an agent loop.
- [The Claude Certified Architect Exam Format, Explained](https://youcanbuildthings.com/articles/claude-certified-architect-exam-format.md): The Claude Certified Architect exam format: 60 scenario questions, 120 minutes, one $99 attempt, scaled 100-1000, and the domain weights that set your prep.