Anthropic Claude Certified Architect – Foundations Sample Questions:

1. You are building developer productivity tools using the Claude Agent SDK. The agent helps engineers explore unfamiliar codebases, understand legacy systems, generate boilerplate code, and automate repetitive tasks. It uses the built-in tools (Read, Write, Bash, Grep, Glob) and integrates with Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers.
Your code review assistant needs to analyze pull requests and provide feedback on three aspects: code style compliance, potential security issues, and documentation completeness. Each aspect requires reading files, running analysis tools, and generating a report section. The review process follows the same three-step workflow for every PR.
Which task decomposition pattern is most appropriate for this workflow?

A) Single comprehensive prompt-include all three instructions in one prompt and let the model handle all three aspects simultaneously.
B) Prompt chaining-break the review into sequential steps where each aspect (style, security, documentation) is analyzed separately, with outputs combined in a final synthesis step.
C) Orchestrator-workers-have a central LLM analyze each PR to dynamically determine which checks are needed, then delegate to specialized worker LLMs for each identified subtask.
D) Routing-classify each PR by type (feature, bugfix, refactor) first, then route to different review prompts optimized for that category.

2. You are building a customer support resolution agent using the Claude Agent SDK. The agent handles high- ambiguity requests like returns, billing disputes, and account issues. It has access to your backend systems through custom Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools ( get_customer , lookup_order , process_refund , escalate_to_human ). Your target is 80%+ first-contact resolution while knowing when to escalate.
Your agent is handling a billing dispute. After calling get_customer and lookup_order , it identifies that the dispute involves a promotional pricing error requiring manager approval-beyond the agent's authorization level.
How should the workflow handle this mid-process escalation?

A) Persist the complete conversation and tool response history to a database, then call escalate_to_human with a reference ID.
B) Call escalate_to_human , passing only the customer's original message.
C) Compile a structured handoff with customer details, order info, and the identified issue before calling escalate_to_human .
D) Attempt the refund with process_refund anyway, escalating only if the system rejects the transaction.

3. You are using Claude Code to accelerate software development. Your team uses it for code generation, refactoring, debugging, and documentation. You need to integrate it into your development workflow with custom slash commands, CLAUDE.md configurations, and understand when to use plan mode vs direct execution.
A security audit requires updating your authentication library from v2 to v3. The migration guide documents breaking changes: authenticate() now returns a Promise instead of accepting a callback, the User type has restructured fields, and three deprecated methods were removed. Grep shows the library is imported in 45 files across several modules.
What's the most effective approach?

A) Update the dependency version, run the test suite, and use Claude Code to fix each failure as it appears.
B) Create a custom slash command encapsulating the migration transformations, then execute it against each file without prior codebase exploration.
C) Enter plan mode to explore library usage across modules, map affected code paths, then create a migration strategy before implementing.
D) Paste the migration guide's breaking changes into your prompt and use direct execution to update all usages across the 45 files.

4. You are building a customer support resolution agent using the Claude Agent SDK. The agent handles high- ambiguity requests like returns, billing disputes, and account issues. It has access to your backend systems through custom Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools (get_customer, lookup_order, process_refund, escalate_to_human). Your target is 80%+ first-contact resolution while knowing when to escalate.
After expanding the agent's MCP tools with delivery-specific capabilities (check_delivery_status, contact_driver, issue_credit, apply_promo_code, update_delivery_address, reschedule_delivery), the total tool count has grown from 4 to 10. Your evaluation suite shows tool selection accuracy has dropped from 88% to
71%. Log analysis reveals the majority of errors involve the agent selecting between semantically overlapping tools-calling issue_credit when process_refund was correct, and calling check_delivery_status when lookup_order already returns the needed data.
Which approach structurally eliminates the semantic overlap identified in the logs as the error source?

A) Consolidate semantically overlapping tools-merge issue_credit and process_refund into a single resolve_compensation tool with an action parameter, and fold check_delivery_status into lookup_order with an optional include_tracking flag.
B) Enable the tool search tool with defer_loading on the six new tools, keeping the original four always loaded, so the agent dynamically discovers specialized tools only when needed.
C) Add few-shot examples to the system prompt demonstrating correct selection for each ambiguous tool pair, such as showing when issue_credit applies versus when process_refund is appropriate.
D) Split the tools across two sub-agents-a "financial resolution" agent with process_refund, issue_credit, and apply_promo_code, and a "delivery operations" agent with the remaining delivery tools-with a coordinator routing between them.

5. You are using Claude Code to accelerate software development. Your team uses it for code generation, refactoring, debugging, and documentation. You need to integrate it into your development workflow with custom slash commands, CLAUDE.md configurations, and understand when to use plan mode vs direct execution.
A security audit requires updating your authentication library from v2 to v3. The migration guide documents breaking changes: authenticate() now returns a Promise instead of accepting a callback, the User type has restructured fields, and three deprecated methods were removed. Grep shows the library is imported in 45 files across several modules.
What's the most effective approach?

A) Update the dependency version, run the test suite, and use Claude Code to fix each failure as it appears.
B) Create a custom slash command encapsulating the migration transformations, then execute it against each file without prior codebase exploration.
C) Enter plan mode to explore library usage across modules, map affected code paths, then create a migration strategy before implementing.
D) Paste the migration guide's breaking changes into your prompt and use direct execution to update all usages across the 45 files.

Solutions: