Claude Certified Architect - Foundations study plan
Claude Certified Architect - Foundations · Give each week a clear focus.
8 weeks · About 7 hours per week
Prompt Engineering and System Prompt Design
Write 10 system prompts that each isolate a distinct behavior (role, tone, output format, refusal policy, tool routing)
Rewrite 5 weak prompts to add explicit constraints, examples, and output schemas, then diff before/after responses
Classify prompt failures into ambiguity, missing constraint, conflicting instruction, and context-starvation buckets
Draft a reusable system-prompt template with sections for role, task, constraints, format, and escalation
Your checkpoint
A 10-prompt portfolio with a one-page failure-taxonomy table mapping each prompt to its dominant failure mode
Prompt Engineering and System Prompt Design & Claude Fundamentals and Model Capabilities
Compare model tiers on the same prompt set and record latency, cost, and quality tradeoffs
Build few-shot examples for 3 tasks and measure accuracy change versus zero-shot
Test chain-of-thought versus direct-answer prompting on 5 reasoning tasks and note where each wins
Document how context window size and output token limits constrain prompt design
Your checkpoint
A benchmarking spreadsheet with 5 prompts x 3 model configs, including pass/fail, latency, and token cost
Tool Use and Agentic Workflows
Define 4 tool schemas with precise descriptions, parameter types, and required fields
Implement a single-turn tool-use loop that parses tool calls and returns results to the model
Add error handling for malformed arguments, unknown tools, and empty results
Trace one multi-step agent run and identify where the loop could stall or repeat
Your checkpoint
A working tool-use demo with 4 tools and a logged trace of a successful multi-step run plus 3 handled error cases
Tool Use and Agentic Workflows
Design an agent with explicit stop conditions, max iterations, and a fallback path
Separate deterministic orchestration logic from model-decided routing
Write tool descriptions that disambiguate near-overlapping tools
Add structured logging for every tool call with inputs, outputs, and latency
Your checkpoint
An agent design doc plus runnable prototype showing stop conditions triggered in at least 2 test scenarios
Context Management and Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Chunk a document set three ways and compare retrieval relevance on 10 queries
Implement a retrieval pipeline that injects only relevant chunks and cites sources
Test how the system behaves when retrieval returns nothing relevant
Measure how context position affects answer quality by placing key chunks first versus last
Your checkpoint
A RAG prototype with a 10-query relevance scorecard comparing at least 2 chunking strategies
Safety, Guardrails, and Responsible AI & Context Management and Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Write guardrails for prompt injection, unsafe output, and data leakage, then attempt to bypass each
Add input validation and output filtering layers around model calls
Document a responsible-AI checklist covering transparency, refusal behavior, and escalation
Test retrieval poisoning by inserting a misleading document and verifying the system flags it
Your checkpoint
A red-team report listing 8 attack attempts, which guardrail caught each, and residual risks
Evaluation, Testing, and Observability
Build an eval set of 25 labeled cases spanning normal, edge, and adversarial inputs
Automate scoring with both exact-match and rubric-based grading
Instrument logging and tracing to capture inputs, outputs, latency, and token usage
Define regression thresholds that would block a prompt or model change
Your checkpoint
An automated eval harness with 25 cases, a scoring report, and documented regression thresholds
Deployment, Integration, and Production Operations & Evaluation, Testing, and Observability
Configure environment-based secrets, retries with backoff, and timeout handling
Design a deployment checklist covering versioning, rollback, and canary rollout
Run the full eval suite as a pre-deploy gate and record results
Review all 7 domains and close gaps using missed eval cases as study targets
Your checkpoint
A production readiness checklist plus a full eval run report used as the deploy gate
Milestones
Week 2: Prompt portfolio complete and model-tier benchmark recorded with cost and latency data
Week 4: Tool-use demo and agent prototype both run end to end with logged traces and handled errors
Week 6: RAG prototype scores at least 7/10 relevant on the query scorecard and red-team report is complete
Week 8: Eval harness passes all 25 cases at or above the defined thresholds and deployment checklist is signed off