A five-week CCDV-F study plan

Five weeks, weighted to the blueprint. Domain 1 gets two of them because it is a third of the exam; Claude Code and evals get an afternoon between them.

Weeks 1–2 — Applications and Integration (33.1%)

Build a small application against the Messages API without an SDK wrapper, so you see the raw request and response. Handle every stop_reason explicitly, including max_tokens and refusal. Implement a correct retry policy that distinguishes permanent from transient errors. Add streaming and consume the event sequence properly. Send a PDF and an image. Log usage and request_id on every call. By the end you should be able to write the request and response shapes from memory.

Week 3 — Model selection, cost and optimisation (16.8%)

Take one task and run it across tiers, measuring quality, latency and cost on your own cases rather than on benchmarks. Add prompt caching to a large stable prefix and verify the effect in cache_read_input_tokens. Move a bulk job to the Batches API. Use the token-counting endpoint to route small requests to a cheaper model. Read the rate-limit headers and build a throttle.

Week 4 — Agents, workflows, tools and MCP (25.3% together)

Implement the same task three ways: a single prompt, a chained workflow with a gate, and an agent loop. Compare cost, latency and failure modes — this is the fastest way to internalise why the exam prefers the simplest pattern. Then write an MCP server with two tools, connect it via a project-scoped .mcp.json, and deliberately break it by printing to stdout so you recognise the symptom.

Week 5 — Security, the light domains, and drilling

Read the injection-mitigation material and add a screening step plus an untrusted-content policy to the agent you built. Skim Claude Code configuration and write one small eval suite — between them they are under 6% of the exam, so hours, not days. Spend the rest of the week on practice questions filtered to your weakest domains, and re-read the anti-pattern list the night before.

← Previous: Facts to memorise  |  Next: Official resources →