Certification Prep
Study Guide — Complete Knowledge Map
All task statements, knowledge points, and practical skills organized by exam domain.
27%
Domain 1: Agentic Architecture & Orchestration
Knowledge of
Official- ●The agentic loop lifecycle: sending requests to Claude, inspecting stop_reason ("tool_use" vs "end_turn"), executing requested tools, and returning results for the next iteration.
- ●How tool results are appended to conversation history so the model can reason about the next action.
- ●The distinction between model-driven decision-making (Claude reasons about which tool to call next based on context) and pre-configured decision trees or tool sequences.
- ●Adding tool results to conversation context between iterations so the model can incorporate new information into its reasoning.
Skills in
Official- ▸Implementing agentic loop control flow that continues when stop_reason is "tool_use" and terminates when stop_reason is "end_turn".
- ▸Avoiding anti-patterns such as parsing natural language signals to determine loop termination, setting arbitrary iteration caps, or checking for assistant text content as a completion indicator.
Knowledge of
Official- ●Hub-and-spoke architecture where a coordinator agent manages all inter-subagent communication, error handling, and information routing.
- ●How subagents operate with isolated context—they do not inherit the coordinator's conversation history automatically.
- ●The role of the coordinator in task decomposition, delegation, result aggregation, and deciding which subagents to invoke based on query complexity.
- ●Risks of overly narrow task decomposition by the coordinator, leading to incomplete coverage of broad research topics.
Skills in
Official- ▸Partitioning research scope across subagents to minimize duplication (e.g., assigning distinct subtopics or source types to each agent).
- ▸Implementing iterative refinement loops where the coordinator evaluates synthesis output for gaps.
- ▸Routing all subagent communication through the coordinator for observability, consistent error handling, and controlled information flow.
Knowledge of
Official- ●The Task tool as the mechanism for spawning subagents, and the requirement that allowedTools must include "Task" for a coordinator to invoke subagents.
- ●That subagent context must be explicitly provided in the prompt—subagents do not automatically inherit parent context or share memory between invocations.
- ●The AgentDefinition configuration including descriptions, system prompts, and tool restrictions for each subagent type.
- ●Fork-based session management for exploring divergent approaches from a shared analysis baseline.
Skills in
Official- ▸Including complete findings from prior agents directly in the subagent's prompt (e.g., passing web search results and document analysis outputs to the synthesis subagent).
- ▸Using structured data formats to separate content from metadata (source URLs, page numbers) when passing context between agents.
- ▸Spawning parallel subagents by emitting multiple Task tool calls in a single coordinator response.
- ▸Designing coordinator prompts that specify research goals and quality criteria rather than step-by-step procedural instructions.
Knowledge of
Official- ●The difference between programmatic enforcement (hooks, prerequisite gates) and prompt-based guidance for workflow ordering.
- ●When deterministic compliance is required (e.g., identity verification before financial operations), prompt instructions alone have a non-zero failure rate.
- ●Structured handoff protocols for mid-process escalation that include customer details, root cause analysis, and recommended actions.
Skills in
Official- ▸Implementing programmatic prerequisites that block downstream tool calls until prerequisite steps have completed.
- ▸Decomposing multi-concern customer requests into distinct items, then investigating each in parallel using shared context before synthesizing a unified resolution.
- ▸Compiling structured handoff summaries (customer ID, root cause, refund amount, recommended action) when escalating to human agents.
Knowledge of
Official- ●Hook patterns (e.g., PostToolUse) that intercept tool results for transformation before the model processes them.
- ●Hook patterns that intercept outgoing tool calls to enforce compliance rules (e.g., blocking refunds above a threshold).
- ●The distinction between using hooks for deterministic guarantees versus relying on prompt instructions for probabilistic compliance.
Skills in
Official- ▸Implementing PostToolUse hooks to normalize heterogeneous data formats (Unix timestamps, ISO 8601, numeric status codes) from different MCP tools.
- ▸Implementing tool call interception hooks that block policy-violating actions and redirect to alternative workflows (e.g., human escalation).
- ▸Choosing hooks over prompt-based enforcement when business rules require guaranteed compliance.
Knowledge of
Official- ●When to use fixed sequential pipelines (prompt chaining) versus dynamic adaptive decomposition based on intermediate findings.
- ●Prompt chaining patterns that break reviews into sequential steps (e.g., analyze each file individually, then run a cross-file integration pass).
- ●The value of adaptive investigation plans that generate subtasks based on what is discovered at each step.
Skills in
Official- ▸Selecting task decomposition patterns appropriate to the workflow: prompt chaining for predictable multi-aspect reviews, dynamic decomposition for open-ended investigation tasks.
- ▸Splitting large code reviews into per-file local analysis passes plus a separate cross-file integration pass to avoid attention dilution.
Knowledge of
Official- ●Named session resumption using --resume <session-name> to continue a specific prior conversation.
- ●fork_session for creating independent branches from a shared analysis baseline to explore divergent approaches.
- ●Why starting a new session with a structured summary is more reliable than resuming with stale tool results.
Skills in
Official- ▸Using --resume with session names to continue named investigation sessions across work sessions.
- ▸Using fork_session to create parallel exploration branches.
- ▸Choosing between session resumption (when prior context is mostly valid) and starting fresh with injected summaries (when prior tool results are stale).
18%
Domain 2: Tool Design & MCP Integration
Knowledge of
Official- ●Tool descriptions as the primary mechanism LLMs use for tool selection; minimal descriptions lead to unreliable selection among similar tools.
- ●The importance of including input formats, example queries, edge cases, and boundary explanations in tool descriptions.
- ●How ambiguous or overlapping tool descriptions cause misrouting (e.g., analyze_content vs analyze_document with near-identical descriptions).
Skills in
Official- ▸Writing tool descriptions that clearly differentiate each tool's purpose, expected inputs, outputs, and when to use it versus similar alternatives.
- ▸Renaming tools and updating descriptions to eliminate functional overlap.
- ▸Splitting generic tools into purpose-specific tools with defined input/output contracts.
Knowledge of
Official- ●The MCP isError flag pattern for communicating tool failures back to the agent.
- ●The distinction between transient errors (timeouts), validation errors (invalid input), business errors (policy violations), and permission errors.
- ●Why uniform error responses (generic "Operation failed") prevent the agent from making appropriate recovery decisions.
Skills in
Official- ▸Returning structured error metadata including errorCategory (transient/validation/permission), isRetryable boolean, and human-readable descriptions.
- ▸Including retriable: false flags for business rule violations so the agent can communicate appropriately.
- ▸Distinguishing between access failures (needing retry decisions) and valid empty results (representing successful queries with no matches).
Knowledge of
Official- ●The principle that giving an agent access to too many tools (e.g., 18 instead of 4-5) degrades tool selection reliability.
- ●Why agents with tools outside their specialization tend to misuse them.
- ●Scoped tool access: giving agents only the tools needed for their role, with limited cross-role tools for specific high-frequency needs.
- ●tool_choice configuration options: "auto", "any", and forced tool selection ({"type": "tool", "name": "..."}).
Skills in
Official- ▸Restricting each subagent's tool set to those relevant to its role.
- ▸Using tool_choice forced selection to ensure a specific tool is called first (e.g., forcing extract_metadata before enrichment tools).
- ▸Setting tool_choice: "any" to guarantee structured output when multiple extraction schemas exist.
Knowledge of
Official- ●MCP server scoping: project-level (.mcp.json) for shared team tooling vs user-level (~/.claude.json) for personal/experimental servers.
- ●Environment variable expansion in .mcp.json (e.g., ${GITHUB_TOKEN}) for credential management without committing secrets.
- ●That tools from all configured MCP servers are discovered at connection time and available simultaneously to the agent.
- ●MCP resources as a mechanism for exposing content catalogs (e.g., issue summaries, documentation hierarchies, database schemas).
Skills in
Official- ▸Configuring shared MCP servers in project-scoped .mcp.json with environment variable expansion for authentication tokens.
- ▸Enhancing MCP tool descriptions to explain capabilities and outputs in detail, preventing the agent from preferring built-in tools over more capable MCP tools.
- ▸Exposing content catalogs as MCP resources to give agents visibility into available data without requiring exploratory tool calls.
Knowledge of
Official- ●Grep for content search (searching file contents for patterns like function names, error messages, or import statements).
- ●Glob for file path pattern matching (finding files by name or extension patterns).
- ●Read/Write for full file operations; Edit for targeted modifications using unique text matching.
- ●When Edit fails due to non-unique text matches, using Read + Write as a fallback.
Skills in
Official- ▸Selecting Grep for searching code content across a codebase, Glob for finding files matching naming patterns.
- ▸Building codebase understanding incrementally: starting with Grep to find entry points, then using Read to follow imports and trace flows.
- ▸Tracing function usage across wrapper modules by first identifying all exported names, then searching for each name across the codebase.
20%
Domain 3: Claude Code Configuration & Workflows
Knowledge of
Official- ●The CLAUDE.md configuration hierarchy: user-level (~/.claude/CLAUDE.md), project-level (.claude/CLAUDE.md or root CLAUDE.md), and directory-level (subdirectory CLAUDE.md files).
- ●User-level settings apply only to that user—instructions in ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md are not shared with teammates via version control.
- ●The @import syntax for referencing external files to keep CLAUDE.md modular.
- ●.claude/rules/ directory for organizing topic-specific rule files as an alternative to a monolithic CLAUDE.md.
Skills in
Official- ▸Diagnosing configuration hierarchy issues (e.g., a new team member not receiving instructions because they're in user-level rather than project-level configuration).
- ▸Using @import to selectively include relevant standards files in each package's CLAUDE.md.
- ▸Splitting large CLAUDE.md files into focused topic-specific files in .claude/rules/ (e.g., testing.md, api-conventions.md, deployment.md).
Knowledge of
Official- ●Project-scoped commands in .claude/commands/ (shared via version control) vs user-scoped commands in ~/.claude/commands/ (personal).
- ●Skills in .claude/skills/ with SKILL.md files that support frontmatter configuration including context: fork, allowed-tools, and argument-hint.
- ●The context: fork frontmatter option for running skills in an isolated sub-agent context, preventing skill outputs from polluting the main conversation.
Skills in
Official- ▸Creating project-scoped slash commands in .claude/commands/ for team-wide availability via version control.
- ▸Using context: fork to isolate skills that produce verbose output (e.g., codebase analysis) or exploratory context (e.g., brainstorming alternatives).
- ▸Configuring allowed-tools in skill frontmatter to restrict tool access during skill execution.
- ▸Using argument-hint frontmatter to prompt developers for required parameters when they invoke the skill without arguments.
Knowledge of
Official- ●.claude/rules/ files with YAML frontmatter paths fields containing glob patterns for conditional rule activation.
- ●How path-scoped rules load only when editing matching files, reducing irrelevant context and token usage.
- ●The advantage of glob-pattern rules over directory-level CLAUDE.md files for conventions that span multiple directories.
Skills in
Official- ▸Creating .claude/rules/ files with YAML frontmatter path scoping (e.g., paths: ["src/api/**/*"] for API conventions, paths: ["**/*.test.*"] for testing conventions).
- ▸Choosing path-specific rules over subdirectory CLAUDE.md files when conventions must apply to files spread across many directories.
Knowledge of
Official- ●Plan mode is designed for complex tasks involving large-scale changes, multiple valid approaches, and multi-file modifications.
- ●Direct execution is appropriate for simple, well-scoped changes (e.g., adding a single validation check to one function).
- ●Plan mode enables safe codebase exploration and design before committing to changes, preventing costly rework.
- ●The Explore subagent for isolating verbose discovery output and returning summaries to preserve main conversation context.
Skills in
Official- ▸Selecting plan mode for tasks with architectural implications (e.g., microservice restructuring, library migrations affecting 45+ files).
- ▸Selecting direct execution for well-understood changes with clear scope.
- ▸Combining plan mode for investigation with direct execution for implementation.
Knowledge of
Official- ●Concrete input/output examples as the most effective way to communicate expected transformations when prose descriptions are interpreted inconsistently.
- ●Test-driven iteration: writing test suites first, then iterating by sharing test failures to guide progressive improvement.
- ●The interview pattern: having Claude ask questions to surface considerations the developer may not have anticipated.
Skills in
Official- ▸Providing 2-3 concrete input/output examples to clarify transformation requirements.
- ▸Writing test suites covering expected behavior, edge cases, and performance requirements before implementation, then iterating by sharing test failures.
- ▸Providing specific test cases with example input and expected output to fix edge case handling.
Knowledge of
Official- ●The -p (or --print) flag for running Claude Code in non-interactive mode in automated pipelines.
- ●--output-format json and --json-schema CLI flags for enforcing structured output in CI contexts.
- ●CLAUDE.md as the mechanism for providing project context (testing standards, fixture conventions, review criteria) to CI-invoked Claude Code.
- ●Session context isolation: why the same Claude session that generated code is less effective at reviewing its own changes compared to an independent review instance.
Skills in
Official- ▸Running Claude Code in CI with the -p flag to prevent interactive input hangs.
- ▸Using --output-format json with --json-schema to produce machine-parseable structured findings for automated posting as inline PR comments.
- ▸Including prior review findings in context when re-running reviews after new commits, instructing Claude to report only new or still-unaddressed issues.
20%
Domain 4: Prompt Engineering & Structured Output
Knowledge of
Official- ●The importance of explicit criteria over vague instructions (e.g., "flag comments only when claimed behavior contradicts actual code behavior" vs "check that comments are accurate").
- ●How general instructions like "be conservative" fail to improve precision compared to specific categorical criteria.
- ●The impact of false positive rates on developer trust: high false positive categories undermine confidence in accurate categories.
Skills in
Official- ▸Writing specific review criteria that define which issues to report versus skip (bugs, security) rather than relying on confidence-based filtering.
- ▸Temporarily disabling high false-positive categories to restore developer trust while improving prompts for those categories.
- ▸Defining explicit severity criteria with concrete code examples for each severity level to achieve consistent classification.
Knowledge of
Official- ●Few-shot examples as the most effective technique for achieving consistently formatted, actionable output when detailed instructions alone produce inconsistent results.
- ●The role of few-shot examples in demonstrating ambiguous-case handling (e.g., tool selection for ambiguous requests, branch-level test coverage gaps).
- ●How few-shot examples enable the model to generalize judgment to novel patterns rather than matching only pre-specified cases.
Skills in
Official- ▸Creating 2-4 targeted few-shot examples for ambiguous scenarios that show reasoning for why one action was chosen over plausible alternatives.
- ▸Including few-shot examples that demonstrate specific desired output format (location, issue, severity, suggested fix) to achieve consistency.
- ▸Providing few-shot examples distinguishing acceptable code patterns from genuine issues to reduce false positives while enabling generalization.
Knowledge of
Official- ●Tool use (tool_use) with JSON schemas as the most reliable approach for guaranteed schema-compliant structured output, eliminating JSON syntax errors.
- ●The distinction between tool_choice: "auto" (model may return text), "any" (model must call a tool but can choose which), and forced tool selection.
- ●That strict JSON schemas via tool use eliminate syntax errors but do not prevent semantic errors (e.g., line items that don't sum to total).
- ●Schema design considerations: required vs optional fields, enum fields with "other" + detail string patterns for extensible categories.
Skills in
Official- ▸Defining extraction tools with JSON schemas as input parameters and extracting structured data from the tool_use response.
- ▸Setting tool_choice: "any" to guarantee structured output when multiple extraction schemas exist and the document type is unknown.
- ▸Forcing a specific tool with tool_choice: {"type": "tool", "name": "extract_metadata"} to ensure a particular extraction runs before enrichment steps.
- ▸Designing schema fields as optional (nullable) when source documents may not contain the information, preventing the model from fabricating values.
Knowledge of
Official- ●Retry-with-error-feedback: appending specific validation errors to the prompt on retry to guide the model toward correction.
- ●The limits of retry: retries are ineffective when the required information is simply absent from the source document.
- ●Feedback loop design: tracking which code constructs trigger findings (detected_pattern field) to enable systematic analysis of dismissal patterns.
Skills in
Official- ▸Implementing follow-up requests that include the original document, the failed extraction, and specific validation errors for model self-correction.
- ▸Identifying when retries will be ineffective (information exists only in an external document not provided) versus when they will succeed (format mismatches, structural output errors).
- ▸Adding detected_pattern fields to structured findings to enable analysis of false positive patterns when developers dismiss findings.
Knowledge of
Official- ●The Message Batches API: 50% cost savings, up to 24-hour processing window, no guaranteed latency SLA.
- ●Batch processing is appropriate for non-blocking, latency-tolerant workloads (overnight reports, weekly audits) and inappropriate for blocking workflows (pre-merge checks).
- ●The batch API does not support multi-turn tool calling within a single request.
- ●custom_id fields for correlating batch request/response pairs.
Skills in
Official- ▸Matching API approach to workflow latency requirements: synchronous API for blocking pre-merge checks, batch API for overnight/weekly analysis.
- ▸Calculating batch submission frequency based on SLA constraints (e.g., 4-hour windows to guarantee 30-hour SLA with 24-hour batch processing).
- ▸Handling batch failures: resubmitting only failed documents (identified by custom_id) with appropriate modifications.
Knowledge of
Official- ●Self-review limitations: a model retains reasoning context from generation, making it less likely to question its own decisions in the same session.
- ●Independent review instances (without prior reasoning context) are more effective at catching subtle issues than self-review instructions or extended thinking.
- ●Multi-pass review: splitting large reviews into per-file local analysis passes plus cross-file integration passes to avoid attention dilution.
Skills in
Official- ▸Using a second independent Claude instance to review generated code without the generator's reasoning context.
- ▸Splitting large multi-file reviews into focused per-file passes for local issues plus separate integration passes for cross-file data flow analysis.
- ▸Running verification passes where the model self-reports confidence alongside each finding to enable calibrated review routing.
15%
Domain 5: Context Management & Reliability
Knowledge of
Official- ●Progressive summarization risks: condensing numerical values, percentages, dates, and customer-stated expectations into vague summaries.
- ●The "lost in the middle" effect: models reliably process information at the beginning and end of long inputs but may omit findings from middle sections.
- ●How tool results accumulate in context and consume tokens disproportionately to their relevance.
- ●The importance of passing complete conversation history in subsequent API requests to maintain conversational coherence.
Skills in
Official- ▸Extracting transactional facts (amounts, dates, order numbers, statuses) into a persistent "case facts" block included in each prompt, outside summarized history.
- ▸Trimming verbose tool outputs to only relevant fields before they accumulate in context.
- ▸Placing key findings summaries at the beginning of aggregated inputs and organizing detailed results with explicit section headers to mitigate position effects.
- ▸Requiring subagents to include metadata (dates, source locations, methodological context) in structured outputs to support accurate downstream synthesis.
Knowledge of
Official- ●Appropriate escalation triggers: customer requests for a human, policy exceptions/gaps, and inability to make meaningful progress.
- ●The distinction between escalating immediately when a customer explicitly demands it versus offering to resolve when the issue is straightforward.
- ●Why sentiment-based escalation and self-reported confidence scores are unreliable proxies for actual case complexity.
- ●How multiple customer matches require clarification (requesting additional identifiers) rather than heuristic selection.
Skills in
Official- ▸Adding explicit escalation criteria with few-shot examples demonstrating when to escalate versus resolve autonomously.
- ▸Honoring explicit customer requests for human agents immediately without first attempting investigation.
- ▸Escalating when policy is ambiguous or silent on the customer's specific request.
Knowledge of
Official- ●Structured error context (failure type, attempted query, partial results, alternative approaches) as enabling intelligent coordinator recovery decisions.
- ●The distinction between access failures (timeouts needing retry decisions) and valid empty results (successful queries with no matches).
- ●Why generic error statuses ("search unavailable") hide valuable context from the coordinator.
- ●Why silently suppressing errors (returning empty results as success) or terminating entire workflows on single failures are both anti-patterns.
Skills in
Official- ▸Returning structured error context including failure type, what was attempted, partial results, and potential alternatives to enable coordinator recovery.
- ▸Having subagents implement local recovery for transient failures and only propagate errors they cannot resolve locally along with partial results.
- ▸Structuring synthesis output with coverage annotations indicating which findings are well-supported versus which topic areas have gaps due to unavailable sources.
Knowledge of
Official- ●Context degradation in extended sessions: models start giving inconsistent answers and referencing "typical patterns" rather than specific classes discovered earlier.
- ●The role of scratchpad files for persisting key findings across context boundaries.
- ●Subagent delegation for isolating verbose exploration output while the main agent coordinates high-level understanding.
- ●Structured state persistence for crash recovery: each agent exports state to a known location, and the coordinator loads a manifest on resume.
Skills in
Official- ▸Spawning subagents to investigate specific questions while the main agent preserves high-level coordination.
- ▸Having agents maintain scratchpad files recording key findings, referencing them for subsequent questions to counteract context degradation.
- ▸Summarizing key findings from one exploration phase before spawning sub-agents for the next phase, injecting summaries into initial context.
- ▸Using /compact to reduce context usage during extended exploration sessions when context fills with verbose discovery output.
Knowledge of
Official- ●The risk that aggregate accuracy metrics (e.g., 97% overall) may mask poor performance on specific document types or fields.
- ●Stratified random sampling for measuring error rates in high-confidence extractions and detecting novel error patterns.
- ●Field-level confidence scores calibrated using labeled validation sets for routing review attention.
Skills in
Official- ▸Implementing stratified random sampling of high-confidence extractions for ongoing error rate measurement and novel pattern detection.
- ▸Analyzing accuracy by document type and field to verify consistent performance across all segments before reducing human review.
- ▸Routing extractions with low model confidence or ambiguous/contradictory source documents to human review, prioritizing limited reviewer capacity.
Knowledge of
Official- ●How source attribution is lost during summarization steps when findings are compressed without preserving claim-source mappings.
- ●The importance of structured claim-source mappings that the synthesis agent must preserve and merge when combining findings.
- ●How to handle conflicting statistics from credible sources: annotating conflicts with source attribution rather than arbitrarily selecting one value.
- ●Temporal data: requiring publication/collection dates in structured outputs to prevent temporal differences from being misinterpreted as contradictions.
Skills in
Official- ▸Requiring subagents to output structured claim-source mappings (source URLs, document names, relevant excerpts) that downstream agents preserve through synthesis.
- ▸Structuring reports with explicit sections distinguishing well-established findings from contested ones, preserving original source characterizations.
- ▸Completing document analysis with conflicting values included and explicitly annotated, letting the coordinator decide how to reconcile before passing to synthesis.
- ▸Requiring subagents to include publication or data collection dates in structured outputs to enable correct temporal interpretation.