CCDV-F Exam-Day Cheat Sheet
Exam logistics, the current model lineup, and the facts that decide the most questions — condensed to one page.
Read this once the morning of the exam. It's not new material — it's the small set of facts that show up as the deciding detail across many questions.
Exam mechanics
| Fact | Value |
|---|---|
| Format | 53 items · multiple-choice + multiple-response · 120 minutes |
| Passing score | 720 (scaled 100–1000) |
| Fee | $125 USD |
| Delivery | Pearson VUE — OnVUE online or a test center |
| Validity | 12 months |
| Eligibility | Claude Partner Network members (confirm on the official page) |
Model tiers (current)
| Model | Price /MTok in-out | Context / max out | Reach for it when… |
|---|---|---|---|
| Haiku 4.5 | $1 / $5 | 200K / 64K | Latency-critical, simple, high-volume |
| Sonnet 5 | $2 / $10 | 1M / 128K | Default speed/intelligence balance |
| Opus 5 | $5 / $25 | 1M / 128K | Complex agentic/multi-step work |
| Fable 5 | $10 / $50 | 1M / — | Only when you need the top capability tier |
Error codes: retry or don't
| Retryable | Permanent — never retry |
|---|---|
| 429, 500, 504, 529, network errors | 400, 401, 402, 403, 404, 409, 413 |
Two facts worth double-checking on any question that hinges on them
No idempotency-key mechanism exists on the Messages API — retrying a side-effecting tool call can duplicate it. And the MCP spec revised 2026-07-28: stateless protocol, Streamable HTTP over the old HTTP+SSE, CIMD over Dynamic Client Registration, Sampling/Logging deprecated.
If you remember one thing
A prompted instruction is not a security control. If an option's entire safety argument is a sentence you'd put in a system prompt, it's a distractor — enforcement has to live in code.
Independent, unofficial study material from Claude Cert Prep. Not affiliated with Anthropic.