Machine Learning

Claude Certified Architect - Professional (CCAR-P)

Full preparation for the CCAR-P certification exam - solution design, integration and retrieval architecture, evaluation and optimisation, governance and risk, stakeholder lifecycle, and Claude Code for teams, mapped objective by objective to the v1.0 blueprint.

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Claude Certified Architect - Professional (CCAR-P)

Complete preparation for the CCAR-P exam: 63 standalone items in 120 minutes, scored 100-1000, with 720 to pass.

Professional is not Foundations with harder questions. Foundations asks which architecture is correct; Professional asks what you do when the correct architecture meets a real organisation - a compliance boundary, a procurement cycle, an SLA you have to sign, a team that has to own the thing after you leave. The items are standalone rather than scenario-clustered, so each one stands alone with no shared setup to lean on, and the score report comes back objective by objective.

Twenty-one modules cover all seven domains - 100% of the exam weight:

• Solution design and architecture (D1, 17%) - eliciting the real problem, business value pillars, workflow-versus-agent decisions, multi-tenancy, fallback design, model portability and total cost of ownership
• Claude models, prompting and context (D2, 13%) - model selection and guardrails, context engineering, and reuse
• Integration (D3, 19%) - tool architecture and least privilege, retrieval architecture, MCP with auth and interoperability, and the realities of enterprise integration
• Evaluation, testing and optimisation (D4, 16%) - metrics and evaluation datasets, diagnosis and improvement, optimisation and monitoring
• Governance, safety and risk (D5, 14%) - guardrails and failure modes, human oversight, compliance, bias and fairness
• Stakeholder communication and lifecycle (D6, 14%) - discovery and requirements, architecture review and service levels, lifecycle ownership
• Developer productivity and enablement (D7, 7%) - rolling Claude Code out to a team, shared configuration and permission policy, hooks and the Agent SDK, and measuring productivity honestly

Then Exam Readiness - a diagnostic-first study path, objective-level drills, and the technique changes that standalone items demand.

Content verified against live documentation as at 4 September 2026, against blueprint v1.0 (effective July 2026). Rapidly-changing surfaces are dated in the text; the compliance module deliberately points at the provider's current documentation rather than reproducing volatile lists.

Note that the exam itself is available to Anthropic Partner Network organisations. The course is open to anyone.

What you will learn

• Elicit the real business problem behind the stated one, and say when Claude is the wrong tool
• Choose between a workflow and an agent from stated constraints, and justify multi-agent cost when it is warranted
• Architect for production: multi-tenancy, tenant isolation, fallback, model portability and total cost of ownership
• Design tool and retrieval architecture on least privilege, and integrate over MCP with real auth
• Build evaluation datasets and metrics that survive contact, then diagnose and optimise against them
• Put governance in place - guardrails, human oversight, and defensible compliance, bias and fairness positions
• Run discovery, architecture review and service levels with stakeholders, and hand over an owned lifecycle
• Roll Claude Code out to a team with shared configuration, permission policy and honest productivity measurement
• Work standalone items under time - no shared scenario setup to lean on, and an objective-level score report

Prerequisites

• CCA-F level knowledge, or equivalent hands-on experience designing and shipping LLM systems
• Comfortable with API integration, retrieval, and evaluation - this course assumes you have operated a system, not only built one
• Familiarity with how your organisation handles compliance, procurement and service levels is useful but not required

Course outline

Module 1: Orientation and Exam Mechanics

Orientation and Exam Mechanics - 5 topics.

• What CCAR-P Tests and How It Differs from Foundations 15 min read
• The Seven-Domain Blueprint and 38 Objectives 16 min read
• Standalone-Item Format: What Changes from Scenario Clustering 15 min read Pro lesson
• Scaled Scoring, Partner-Network Access, and Registration 15 min read Pro lesson
• How to Use This Course - A Diagnostic-First Study Path 15 min read Pro lesson

Module 2: From Business Problem to Architecture

From Business Problem to Architecture - 7 topics.

• Eliciting the Real Problem Behind the Stated One 16 min read Pro lesson
• The Five Business Value Pillars and What Each Implies 16 min read Pro lesson
• Defining Success Before You Build - Metrics That Survive Contact 16 min read Pro lesson
• Matching Metrics to Architectural Choices 16 min read Pro lesson
• Build Versus Buy: The First Architectural Decision 16 min read Pro lesson
• When Not to Use Claude at All 16 min read Pro lesson
• Producing the Architecture Brief 16 min read Pro lesson

Module 3: Patterns, Workflows, and Agents

Patterns, Workflows, and Agents - 6 topics.

• The Augmented LLM as the Building Block 16 min read Pro lesson
• The Workflow Patterns and What Each Is For 17 min read Pro lesson
• Workflow or Agent - The Decision Procedure 16 min read Pro lesson
• Orchestrator-Worker and When It Pays 16 min read Pro lesson
• Multi-Agent Costs, Failure Modes, and the Three Justifications 17 min read Pro lesson
• Decomposition: When to Split and When One Prompt Suffices 17 min read Pro lesson

Module 4: Architecting for Production

Architecting for Production - 6 topics.

• End-to-End Architecture Anatomy 16 min read Pro lesson
• Multi-Tenancy and Tenant Isolation 17 min read Pro lesson
• Fallback Architecture and Graceful Degradation 17 min read Pro lesson
• Model Portability and Lock-In 17 min read Pro lesson
• Cost Modelling and Total Cost of Ownership 17 min read Pro lesson
• Documenting the Architecture: The Decision Record 17 min read Pro lesson

Module 5: Models, Prompting, and Guardrails

Models, Prompting, and Guardrails - 8 topics.

• The Claude Model Lineup and Capability Tiers 16 min read Pro lesson
• Capability, Speed, and Cost Trade-offs 16 min read Pro lesson
• Model Routing and Cost at Scale 16 min read Pro lesson
• System Prompt Design for Production Systems 16 min read Pro lesson
• Zero-Shot, Few-Shot, and Example Set Design 16 min read Pro lesson
• Extended Thinking: When It Helps and What It Is Incompatible With 16 min read Pro lesson
• Guardrails, Refusal Handling, and Layered Defence 16 min read Pro lesson
• Iterative Prompt Refinement with Measurement 16 min read Pro lesson

Module 6: Context Engineering and Reuse

Context Engineering and Reuse - 7 topics.

• Context as a Finite Resource 16 min read Pro lesson
• Compaction and Context Editing 16 min read Pro lesson
• Context Isolation with Subagents 16 min read Pro lesson
• Prompt Caching: Mechanics and Layout 16 min read Pro lesson
• Caching Economics and Debugging a Cache Miss 16 min read Pro lesson
• Modular, Reusable Prompt Architecture 16 min read Pro lesson
• Skills and Progressive Disclosure 16 min read Pro lesson

Module 7: Tool Architecture and Least Privilege

Tool Architecture and Least Privilege - 6 topics.

• Diagnosing Capability Bloat 16 min read Pro lesson
• Right-Sizing an Agent's Tool Set 16 min read Pro lesson
• Least-Privilege Tool Design and the Two Boundaries 16 min read Pro lesson
• Secrets Management and Exfiltration Paths 17 min read Pro lesson
• Finding Security Gaps in an Agent Design 16 min read Pro lesson
• Justifying Configuration Decisions to a Reviewer 16 min read Pro lesson

Module 8: Retrieval Architecture

Retrieval Architecture - 6 topics.

• When to Skip RAG Entirely - and What to Do Instead 16 min read Pro lesson
• Chunking Strategies and Their Trade-offs 16 min read Pro lesson
• Contextual Retrieval 17 min read Pro lesson
• Indexing and Embedding Design 16 min read Pro lesson
• Dense, Sparse, and Hybrid Search 16 min read Pro lesson
• Reranking and Rank Fusion 17 min read Pro lesson

Module 9: MCP, Auth, and Interoperability

MCP, Auth, and Interoperability - 5 topics.

• MCP Architecture: Transports, Scopes, and Primitives 16 min read Pro lesson
• OAuth, Tokens, and MCP Authentication Patterns 16 min read Pro lesson
• MCP Versus Agent-to-Agent Protocols 16 min read Pro lesson
• Progressive Tool Discovery and Code Execution with MCP 17 min read Pro lesson
• Trust Boundaries Across Integrated Systems 17 min read Pro lesson

Module 10: Enterprise Integration Reality

Enterprise Integration Reality - 5 topics.

• Brownfield Integration: Working With What Exists 16 min read Pro lesson
• Capacity Planning, Rate Limits, and Quotas 17 min read Pro lesson
• Data Pipelines and the Integration Path Decision 16 min read Pro lesson
• Latency Budgets: Trading Accuracy for Speed 16 min read Pro lesson
• Choosing an Integration Path - The Decision Procedure 17 min read Pro lesson

Module 11: Metrics and Evaluation Datasets

Metrics and Evaluation Datasets - 6 topics.

• Defining Success With Measurable Criteria 16 min read Pro lesson
• Metrics That Predict Production Behaviour 16 min read Pro lesson
• Multidimensional Evaluation Design 16 min read Pro lesson
• Building the Evaluation Dataset 16 min read Pro lesson
• Choosing a Grading Method 16 min read Pro lesson
• LLM-as-Judge: Rubrics, Calibration, and Its Limits 17 min read Pro lesson

Module 12: Diagnosis and Improvement

Diagnosis and Improvement - 6 topics.

• Process Checks Versus Outcome Checks 16 min read Pro lesson
• A Framework for Diagnosing a Failing System 17 min read Pro lesson
• Diagnosing Hallucination: Prompt, Model, or Retrieval? 17 min read Pro lesson
• Measuring Retrieval Quality Specifically 16 min read Pro lesson
• Running Effective A/B Tests 17 min read Pro lesson
• The Iterative Improvement Loop 17 min read Pro lesson

Module 13: Optimisation and Monitoring

Optimisation and Monitoring - 6 topics.

• Cutting Latency Without Losing Quality 16 min read Pro lesson
• Caching and Batch Economics 16 min read Pro lesson
• The Cost-Performance Frontier 16 min read Pro lesson
• Observability for Claude Applications 16 min read Pro lesson
• Tracing With OpenTelemetry: Spans, Hierarchies, and Sessions 17 min read Pro lesson
• Production Monitoring: The Metrics That Matter 17 min read Pro lesson

Module 14: Guardrails and Failure Modes

Guardrails and Failure Modes - 6 topics.

• Designing Layered Guardrails 16 min read Pro lesson
• Output Screening and Classifiers 16 min read Pro lesson
• Prompt Injection: Architectural Defence 17 min read Pro lesson
• How LLM Systems Actually Fail 16 min read Pro lesson
• Agentic and Compounding Failures 17 min read Pro lesson
• Knowing and Documenting the Model's Limits 16 min read Pro lesson

Module 15: Human Oversight and Risk

Human Oversight and Risk - 5 topics.

• Human-in-the-Loop Validation Strategies 16 min read Pro lesson
• When to Require Human Review - The Threshold Decision 16 min read Pro lesson
• Risk Identification and the Risk Register 16 min read Pro lesson
• Data Residency and Multi-Region Architecture 17 min read Pro lesson
• Incident Response for AI Systems 16 min read Pro lesson

Module 16: Compliance, Bias, and Fairness

Compliance, Bias, and Fairness - 5 topics.

• GDPR for LLM Architectures 17 min read Pro lesson
• HIPAA and Protected Health Data 17 min read Pro lesson
• FedRAMP Authorisation Paths 16 min read Pro lesson
• Choosing a Compliance Boundary 16 min read Pro lesson
• Bias, Fairness, Transparency, and Explainability 17 min read Pro lesson

Module 17: Discovery and Requirements

Discovery and Requirements - 5 topics.

• Structured Discovery for AI Projects 16 min read Pro lesson
• Eliciting Real Requirements From Stated Ones 16 min read Pro lesson
• Building the Discovery Document 16 min read Pro lesson
• Framing Architectural Trade-offs for a Non-Technical Audience 16 min read Pro lesson
• Selling a Decision to Executives 16 min read Pro lesson

Module 18: Architecture Review and Service Levels

Architecture Review and Service Levels - 5 topics.

• ATAM and Quality Attribute Workshops 16 min read Pro lesson
• Running an Architecture Review 16 min read Pro lesson
• SLIs, SLOs, and SLAs for AI Systems 17 min read Pro lesson
• Error Budgets and Release Gates 16 min read Pro lesson
• Writing Decision Records That Survive Handover 16 min read Pro lesson

Module 19: Lifecycle Ownership

Lifecycle Ownership - 6 topics.

• The AI Solution Lifecycle End to End 16 min read Pro lesson
• Stakeholder Feedback Loops 16 min read Pro lesson
• Architecture Documentation and Handoff 16 min read Pro lesson
• Team Topology: Who Owns What After Handoff 16 min read Pro lesson
• Monitor, Iterate, and Know When to Stop 16 min read Pro lesson
• Deprecation and Sunset: Retiring an AI System 17 min read Pro lesson

Module 20: Claude Code for Teams

Claude Code for Teams - 8 topics.

• Rolling Claude Code Out to a Team 16 min read Pro lesson
• Shared Configuration and Permission Policy 17 min read Pro lesson
• MCP Servers and Managed Settings 16 min read Pro lesson
• The Explore-Plan-Execute Loop 16 min read Pro lesson
• Automating With Hooks and the Agent SDK 16 min read Pro lesson
• Root-Cause Debugging With Claude 16 min read Pro lesson
• Operational Triage and Monitoring 16 min read Pro lesson
• Measuring Developer Productivity Honestly 16 min read Pro lesson

Module 21: Exam Readiness

Exam Readiness - 4 topics.

• Diagnostic Assessment and Objective-Level Baseline 16 min read Pro lesson
• Objective Drills and the Remediation Loop 16 min read Pro lesson
• Standalone-Item Technique - What Changes From Scenario Format 16 min read Pro lesson
• Final Review and Exam Day 16 min read Pro lesson

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