Claude Certified Developer - Foundations study guide
Claude Certified Developer - Foundations · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The Claude Certified Developer – Foundations credential is intended for developers who build applications on top of Anthropic's Claude models and want a structured way to demonstrate that skill. It suits backend and full-stack engineers, AI application developers, and technical leads who are moving from experimenting with the API to shipping something reliable. The Claude Certified Developer - Foundations study guide has 7 sections and about 2,287 words.
01Claude API Fundamentals
A Claude request is a JSON object with three essential parts: a model identifier, a max tokens cap, and a messages array. Optionally you add a top-level system string, a tools list, temperature / top p , stop sequences , and stream: true .
361 words, about 2 min02Prompt Design and Prompt Engineering
Claude follows instructions literally, so underspecification is the dominant failure mode: vague verbs ("improve", "handle"), missing audience, missing length, missing output schema. State the task, the role and audience, the constraints, and the exact output format.
314 words, about 2 min03Tool Use and Function Calling
Tools are declared in a tools array. Each entry needs name (snake case, no spaces), description , and input schema in JSON Schema.
358 words, about 2 min04Agentic Workflows and Multi-Step Orchestration
Agentic systems wrap the Messages API in a loop: send state, inspect stop reason , execute any requested tools and append results, repeat until end turn or a termination condition. Every agent needs explicit termination: a maximum iteration count, a wall-clock or token budget, and a defined success predicate.
321 words, about 2 min05Context Management, Retrieval, and Prompt Caching
Every request resends the full conversation, so token cost grows superlinearly across turns. Budget context explicitly: system prompt, tool definitions, retrieved documents, history, and room for the reply.
310 words, about 2 min06Evaluation, Testing, and Observability
You cannot improve what you do not measure. Assemble a golden dataset of realistic inputs with expected properties, not one-off anecdotes.
315 words, about 2 min07Safety, Alignment, and Responsible Deployment
Claude is trained with human feedback and constitutional techniques to be helpful, honest, and harmless. In application terms that means refusals are calibrated, not absolute: a well-framed legitimate request should be served, while genuinely harmful ones are declined briefly with, where possible, a safe alternative.
308 words, about 2 min