18 pages, five exam domains, 50+ clickable glossary cards, real-payload walkthroughs, and a capstone build — independent, unofficial, and free.
Anthropic's Claude Certified Architect exams test real judgment — agentic architecture, Claude Code, prompting and structured output, tools and MCP, context and reliability. While preparing for the exam I built the study guide I wished existed: every concept explained conversationally, every theory diagram paired with a walkthrough using real API payloads, and every technical term clickable.
A fact worth knowing before you plan your path: the proctored exams are currently limited to Claude Partner Network organizations — individual registration isn't available yet. Many “Anthropic certified” badges you'll see online are Anthropic Academy course-completion certificates — open to everyone, and worth earning.
This guide exists for the knowledge either way. Certification study material gives an architect what scattered blog posts can't — structure, a shared language, and a map of the complete territory. That's valuable with or without the badge: if you're at a partner organization it helps you prepare for the exam; if you're not, it prepares you to build — which is what the exam measures anyway.
Five exam domains, each theory diagram paired with a “see it run” walkthrough — actual request/response JSON, tool results, and which branch fires. The messages array, stop reasons, and context math explained from first principles.
Every technical term opens a card: definition, where it comes from, how it looks in code, a use-case story, and “go deeper” links that drill card-to-card. Multi-directional navigation — concept to usage to creation.
How agents actually run: headless mode, CI recipes, a full GCP reference architecture with a traced request, cross-cloud equivalence (AWS/Azure), model portability and the LLM-gateway pattern.
30 reasoned practice questions, a day-before cram sheet, worked scenario studies built on the public blueprint, and a guided capstone: one helpdesk agent that touches every domain.
Written to carry a reader from “I use Claude Code in a terminal” all the way to architect-level judgment — a six-rung ladder from first API call to production reference architecture. If you're at a partner organization, it prepares you to pass. If you're not, it prepares you to build — which is what the exam measures anyway.
Start reading → claude.sammuthu.com