CCDV-F study guides
In-depth, fact-checked guides to every domain of the Claude Certified Developer – Foundations — 8 domains with real examples, concrete scenarios, and the traps each question likes to set.
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The Complete CCDV-F Study Guide: Claude Certified Developer – Foundations
What the Developer exam actually tests, how its eight domains are weighted, and a study plan built around the heaviest one: shipping real applications against the Claude API.
Read the guideExam weighting
Top CCDV-F Mistakes (and the Traps That Cost Real Points)
An independent, unofficial field guide to the implementation traps that catch even experienced developers on the Claude Certified Developer – Foundations exam.
Read Read this tooFrequently Confused Concepts — Claude Certified Developer Foundations (CCDV-F)
Six implementation choices where several options genuinely work — the mental model that decides which one the exam rewards.
ReadThe 8 domains
Deep divesAgents and Workflows
Why the exam cares more about when you reach for an agent than how you wire one up — the workflow-vs-agent distinction, the five named workflow patterns, and where the Claude Agent SDK fits next to raw API tool-use and Managed Agents.
Applications and Integration
The single heaviest domain on the exam: how to scope, build, and ship a production Claude integration — request mechanics, streaming vs. batch, the retryable-vs-permanent error trap, and the engineering discipline around it.
Claude Code
How CLAUDE.md, settings.json, permission modes, hooks, Skills, subagents, and headless mode fit together to run Claude Code safely on a real project — and the one setting that changed its default behavior in mid-2026.
Eval, Testing, and Debugging
The exam's smallest domain tests one skill: correctly isolating which layer actually failed — API, tool, prompt, or model — from a single observed symptom, plus the deterministic-vs-model-based evaluation and regression-testing discipline that keeps Claude apps stable as they change.
Model Selection and Optimization
How to reason about tokens, context windows, and adaptive thinking like a developer — then turn that into a defensible model choice among Opus, Sonnet, Haiku, and Fable, and a cost model that survives contact with a real workload.
Prompt and Context Engineering
Context is a budget, not a bottomless buffer. How to manage it deliberately, write instructions Claude will actually follow, and never trust model output without validating it — the three sub-skills behind Domain 6's 11% of the CCDV-F exam.
Security and Safety
Prompt injection vs. jailbreak, the tool_result-only rule for untrusted content, least-privilege sandboxing, Claude Hooks as deterministic enforcement, and the three ways to authenticate to the Claude API.
Tools and MCPs
How to define tools Claude actually calls, run the tool_use/tool_result loop correctly, and choose between built-in tools, custom tools, Skills, and MCP servers — including what changed in the MCP spec's July 2026 revision.
Test yourself
Scenario questions with four plausible, equal-length options, instant scoring, a per-domain breakdown, and an explanation for every option.
Cheat-sheets to pin up
The domain blueprint, the judgment-trap taxonomy, the platform- selection matrix, and a when-to-use-what decision grid — dense, print-friendly one-pagers.
Take the 2-minute readiness check
Rate your confidence per domain and get a weight-adjusted readiness estimate plus the exact domains to study first.
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