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    CCA Exam Drills — Scenarios & Rapid Recall

    The 6 recurring Claude Certified Architect exam scenarios, plus a rapid-recall cheat-sheet of file locations, critical values, and decision shortcuts.

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    The exam reuses a small set of scenarios and a handful of exact values. Drill these until they're reflexive — they convert "thinking" questions into "recognition" questions.

    The 6 recurring scenarios

    Roughly four of these appear on any given exam instance. Each tests the same engineering judgement in a different costume.

    Scenario Domains What it tests
    Customer Support Agent 1, 2, 5 Escalation triggers, structured errors, PreToolUse for refunds, context preservation
    Code Generation 3, 5 CLAUDE.md hierarchy, plan mode, skills, independent review
    Multi-Agent Research 1, 2, 5 Narrow decomposition, parallel Tasks, provenance, gap annotation
    Developer Productivity 1, 2, 3 Grep vs Glob, MCP config, session management
    CI/CD Pipeline 3, 4 -p flag, multi-pass review, independent review, duplicate prevention
    Structured Extraction 4, 5 Nullable fields, self-correction, retry limits, batch API
    TIP

    Don't memorise scenario-specific answers — the same principles transfer to any costume. When you recognise a scenario, recall its failure modes (above), then apply the 3 rules.

    Escalation: 3 valid triggers, 2 traps

    IMPORTANT

    Escalate when: (1) the customer explicitly asks for a human — immediate, no "let me try one more thing"; (2) there's a policy gap — no rule for the edge case; (3) no progress after a bounded number of attempts.

    WARNING

    Never escalate on: sentiment ("seems frustrated" — frustrated customers often want resolution) or self-reported confidence ("I'm 60% sure" — Claude's raw confidence is uncalibrated). Use explicit categorical criteria.

    Conflicting sources

    WARNING

    When two sources disagree, annotate both with source and date — never pick one, never average. Averaging invents a number neither source supports. Check publication dates first: a 2022 figure vs a 2024 figure isn't a contradiction, it's a trend.

    File locations (exact)

    File Scope In VCS Use
    ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md Personal No Personal preferences
    .claude/CLAUDE.md Team Yes Team standards
    src/api/CLAUDE.md Directory Yes Subsystem rules
    .claude/rules/*.md Path glob Yes Cross-directory conventions by file type
    .mcp.json Team Yes Team MCP servers
    ~/.claude.json Personal No Personal MCP servers

    Critical values to memorise

    Item Value
    Pass score 720 / 1000
    Questions / duration 60 MCQ / 120 min
    Batch API savings / window 50% / up to 24h, no SLA
    Max tools per agent 4–5
    @import nesting 5 levels max
    CI flag -p / --print
    Loop done / wants tool stop_reason = end_turn / tool_use

    "You see X → answer Y" shortcuts

    You see… Answer is…
    Financial / compliance / security must-happen Hook (Pre or PostToolUse)
    Tool mis-routing Fix tool descriptions
    Narrow multi-agent results Fix coordinator decomposition
    CI pipeline hangs Missing -p flag
    Team standards location .claude/CLAUDE.md
    Conflicting statistics Annotate both, never pick/average
    Explicit human request Escalate immediately
    Absent data + retry loop Nullable fields instead
    18+ tools Split into scoped agents
    Self-review Independent instance
    TIP

    Context reliability (Domain 5): for values that must survive a long chat, inject a case-facts block verbatim at the top of every prompt — it survives /compact because it's re-injected outside the conversation history.

    You've got the patterns. Now drill the 240-question domain quiz →

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    Lesson 3 of 3 · Claude Certified Architect — Exam Drills

    The 6 recurring Claude Certified Architect exam scenarios, plus a rapid-recall cheat-sheet of file locations, critical values, and decision shortcuts.

    In the rest of this lesson

    • Escalation: 3 valid triggers, 2 traps
    • Conflicting sources
    • File locations (exact)
    • Critical values to memorise
    • "You see X → answer Y" shortcuts

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