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I wrote 1,100+ CCAR practice questions, then passed the Claude Certified Architect – Professional exam

Sigma Foundry — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 20:06:35 +0000

Today I passed the Claude Certified Architect – Professional (CCAR-P) exam, with a scaled score of 894 (the pass mark is 720).

Over the past few weeks I wrote original practice exams for both Claude architect exams, CCAR-F and CCAR-P, working only from Anthropic's public exam guides and docs. That's 360 CCAR-F questions and 756 CCAR-P questions. Then I sat the real thing.

The exam is under NDA, so nothing here describes its questions. Everything below comes from the public exam guide and from what my preparation taught me.

What paid off in preparation

1. Practicing judgment, not recall. The CCAR-P guide is built around architecture decisions, not facts to memorize. Writing questions where two options are both reasonable, and only one wins on the principle being tested, was the best study I did.

2. Knowing when a rule needs a control, not a prompt. If something has to happen every time, a deterministic control (a hook, a gate, a validation step) beats "add it to the system prompt." I wrote that trap into dozens of practice questions, and it stuck.

3. Timed full-length mocks. The guide's format is 63 questions in 120 minutes, about 1.9 minutes each. Untimed practice hides pacing problems.

4. Studying to the domain weights. The guide publishes them. Integration is the heaviest at 19% and Developer Productivity the lightest at 7%. Take a diagnostic mock, then drill your weakest heavy domain, not your favorite one.

5. Counting before eliminating. On multi-answer questions, read how many answers are required before you start crossing options out.

How I'd prepare in 3 steps

Read the official exam guide end to end and list every task statement.
Take one timed mock as a diagnostic and read your per-domain results.
For every miss, write one line on why the tempting wrong answer was wrong. That habit is the skill.

If you want the practice exams

Disclosure: I wrote these and sell them on Udemy. They're unofficial, with no affiliation with Anthropic, and they're original questions, not exam content. Each course has 6 full timed mocks with every option explained, right or wrong. They're $9.99 with code SIGMA999 through Nov 10:

Honest reviews, good or bad, help me fix what's off. If you're preparing now, ask about the format in the comments and I'll answer what the public guide covers.

The CCAR-P exam in 7 domains: what each one asks you to decide

Sigma Foundry — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 15:03:11 +0000

Most Claude Certified Architect prep content covers the Foundations exam (CCAR-F). The Professional exam (CCAR-P) gets far less attention, so here's a domain-by-domain look, based on the public exam guide and on building two volumes of practice tests against it.

Quick facts

63 items, multiple-choice and multiple-response (each item tells you how many to pick)
120 minutes, about 1.9 minutes per item
Scaled pass mark of 720/1000
The score report shows % correct by domain, which matters for how you study (see the end)

The seven domains

Domain	Weight	≈ items of 63
D1 Solution Design & Architecture	17%	11
D2 Models, Prompting & Context	13%	8
D3 Integration	19%	12
D4 Evaluation, Testing & Optimization	16%	10
D5 Governance, Safety & Risk	14%	9
D6 Stakeholder Communication & Lifecycle	14%	9
D7 Dev Productivity & Ops Enablement	7%	4

Item counts are my rounding of weight × 63, not official numbers.

The big shift from Foundations

D4, D5 and D6 together are 44% of the exam. Nearly half of CCAR-P is about running Claude systems responsibly over time: measuring them, controlling risk, and keeping the people who own the decision informed. If your prep is all architecture and prompting, you're studying for about half the test.

The judgment call behind each domain

These are general principles, not exam content, but they're the decisions that kept recurring when I wrote questions against the guide's objectives.

D1 Design. Pick the simplest architecture that meets the stated requirement. An answer that adds agents, tools or models the scenario doesn't need is usually the distractor.
D2 Models, prompting, context. Treat context as a budget. Answers that retrieve or summarize what's needed tend to beat answers that stuff everything in or jump to a bigger model.
D3 Integration (the heaviest domain). Put reliability in deterministic places: schemas, validation, retries, idempotency. An instruction in the prompt isn't a contract.
D4 Evaluation. If a change can't be measured, it isn't ready to ship. Answers that add an eval set or a regression check before rollout usually beat "monitor it in production."
D5 Governance and risk. Controls that hold every time (permissions, gates, human approval for high-impact actions) beat policy text the model is asked to follow.
D6 Stakeholders and lifecycle. The strong answer usually puts trade-offs, risk and a rollback plan in front of whoever owns the decision, instead of quietly picking for them.
D7 Dev productivity and ops. It's only 7%. Know it, but don't spend a week on it.

How to study for a weighted exam

Take one full timed mock as a diagnostic. Pacing is tight at about 1.9 minutes per item.
Multiply each domain's weight by how weak you were in it, and put your hours there.
For every miss, write one line on why the tempting option was wrong. That line is the skill the exam tests.

Practice tests (and free access if you'll tell me what's wrong)

Disclosure: I sell these on Udemy. They're unofficial and not affiliated with Anthropic. There are two CCAR-P volumes, each with 6 full timed 63-item mocks weighted to the domains above, with every option explained.

The first 13 people per volume can get in free. Take a mock and post in the comments anything that's off: a wrong key, an ambiguous question, weighting that feels wrong. You don't need to leave a review to use a code. If you do rate it, make it honest, good or bad.

CCAR-P Vol. 1: free with CCARP-EARLY (first 13), otherwise $9.99 with SIGMA999 through Nov 10: https://www.udemy.com/course/claude-architect-professional-ccar-p-practice-exams/?couponCode=SIGMA999
CCAR-P Vol. 2: free with CCARP2-EARLY (first 13), otherwise $9.99 with SIGMA999: https://www.udemy.com/course/claude-architect-professional-ccar-p-practice-exams-vol-2/?couponCode=SIGMA999

To use a free code, open the link and swap the code in at checkout. For a side-by-side of CCAR-F and CCAR-P, see my earlier post: https://dev.to/sigmafoundry1/ccar-f-vs-ccar-p-what-each-claude-architect-exam-actually-tests-from-building-700-practice-1kg2

CCAR-F vs CCAR-P: what each Claude Architect exam actually tests (from building 700+ practice questions)

Sigma Foundry — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 14:50:25 +0000

Over the last few weeks I built original practice exams for both Claude Certified Architect exams, working only from Anthropic's public exam guides. Claude drafted the questions, and a separate blind pass re-answered every item with the key hidden; anything that disagreed got fixed or cut. Here's the format side by side, plus the patterns that kept showing up.

Format at a glance

	CCAR-F (Foundations)	CCAR-P (Professional)
Questions	60	63
Time	120 min	120 min (~1.9 min per item)
Pass mark	720/1000 scaled	720/1000 scaled
Structure	4 of 6 scenarios per sitting	7 domains, Integration heaviest (19%)
Heaviest domain	Agentic Architecture (27%)	Integration (19%)

Patterns that trip people up

The bigger-model answer. Options that fix an architecture problem by upgrading the model or stuffing more context are usually distractors. The exam rewards fixing the design.
Prompt vs. hook. If a rule has to hold every time (a refund cap, a required check), the right answer is a deterministic control such as a hook or gate, not an extra instruction.
Scope boundaries. The CCAR-F guide explicitly excludes topics like fine-tuning, embeddings, vision and computer use. An answer that depends on them is a red flag.
Multi-response items. Each tells you how many answers to pick. Count before you eliminate.
Where config belongs (CCAR-F, Claude Code domain, 20%). User-level vs. project-level vs. path-scoped rules. "Put it in your user config" is wrong when a whole team needs it.

How to study

Take one full timed mock as a diagnostic. Pacing matters, especially on CCAR-P.
Read your per-domain results and drill the weakest domain, not your favourite.
For every miss, write down why the tempting option was wrong. That's the skill the exam tests.

Tell me where these are wrong

The most common complaint about existing practice banks is that they test recall instead of judgment between two close options. I wrote these to fix that, but I'd rather hear where I missed now than in a review later.

So the first 13 people per course can get in free. Take a full mock and post in the comments whatever is off: a wrong key, an ambiguous question, a domain that feels over- or under-weighted, or a mock that was easier than the real thing. You don't need to leave a review to use a code. If you do rate it on Udemy, make it honest, good or bad.

Disclosure: I sell these on Udemy. They're unofficial and not affiliated with Anthropic. Each course has 6 full timed mocks with every option explained.

CCAR-F: free with code CCARF-EARLY (first 13), otherwise $9.99 with SIGMA999 through Nov 10: https://www.udemy.com/course/claude-architect-foundations-ccar-f-practice-exams/?couponCode=SIGMA999
CCAR-P Vol. 1: free with CCARP-EARLY (first 13), otherwise $9.99 with SIGMA999: https://www.udemy.com/course/claude-architect-professional-ccar-p-practice-exams/?couponCode=SIGMA999
CCAR-P Vol. 2: free with CCARP2-EARLY (first 13), otherwise $9.99 with SIGMA999: https://www.udemy.com/course/claude-architect-professional-ccar-p-practice-exams-vol-2/?couponCode=SIGMA999

To use a free code, open the link and swap the code in at checkout. Questions about the format are welcome in the comments too.