Source Catalog — Every Resource, Rated
Catalog verified August 2026.
Everything worth reading, in one map — so you never have to go hunting. Official sources are authoritative for the exam; community sources are rated for usefulness. This guide already synthesizes all of them, but when two sources disagree, official wins, every time.
Tier 1 — Official Anthropic (authoritative)
| Source | What it covers | Exam domains |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropic Academy↗ (cert registration lives on the separate partner tenant↗) | The 13 courses as of August 2026: Claude Code 101, Claude Code in Action, Intro to MCP, MCP: Advanced Topics, Building with the Claude API, cloud-specific tracks | all |
| Official exam guides (downloadable per exam from each certification page↗) | THE blueprint: domains, weights, sample items | all |
| Anthropic API docs↗ | Messages API, tool use, streaming, caching, batches, extended thinking, vision | 1, 3, 4, 5 |
| Claude Code docs↗ | memory, skills, slash commands, subagents, hooks reference, settings, MCP config, headless/CI, Agent SDK | 2 |
| MCP spec + docs↗ | architecture, primitives, transports, SDKs, security | 4 |
| "Building Effective Agents"↗ (Anthropic engineering essay) | workflows vs agents, the five patterns, simplicity doctrine — the most-quoted source in Domain 1 | 1 |
| "How we built our multi-agent research system"↗ (Anthropic engineering) | orchestrator–workers in production, context isolation, token economics | 1 |
| Anthropic prompt-engineering guide↗ | XML tags, multishot, CoT, prefill, long-context ordering | 3 |
| Anthropic cookbook↗ | runnable notebooks: tool use, RAG, extraction, evals | 1, 3, 4 |
Tier 2 — High-quality community (helpful, verify against Tier 1)
| Source | Notes |
|---|---|
| freeCodeCamp CCAR-F (the course uses the older CCA-F name) prep course (Andrew Brown, ~13 h video) — search freeCodeCamp for the course↗ (link goes to their news hub, not the course) | broad walkthrough of the Foundations blueprint; good for passive review passes |
| spectrumailab.com — "All 4 Claude certification exams explained"↗ | the clearest public breakdown of blueprints, fees, scenario bank, and retake policy |
| Medium: "The Complete Guide to the Claude Certified Architect — Foundations" (Y. Yousefi) | narrative domain tour |
| claudecertificationguide.com↗ | free mock exams — calibrate, but treat answer keys skeptically. Its 60-question mock informed this KB's facts and recall lines — take it at their site. |
| Claude Prep Lab↗ | free CCA-F mock (60 questions, 4 scenarios); its mock informed this KB's facts and recall lines — take it at their site. |
| claudedirectory.org↗ cert guide · explainx.ai↗ blog · pasqualepillitteri.it↗ guide | logistics summaries; cross-check dates/prices against the Partner Academy |
| LinkedIn exam-experience posts | worth skimming for format surprises (proctoring quirks, scenario feel); zero authority on content |
Tier 3 — Adjacent deep background (beyond the exam, toward mastery)
- Anthropic engineering blog↗ at large (context engineering, agent SDK posts, Claude Code best practices)
- MCP server ecosystem↗ — read 2–3 real servers before the exam
- This guide's sibling walkthrough of a production-shaped agent: sammuthu.com/ai-ml/not-a-chatbot↗ — the harness/gates/evals philosophy running through every domain here, with code
How to use the catalog in 3 days
- Official exam guide first (30 min) — it defines what counts.
- This KB's five domain pages + scenarios (day 1–2) — the compressed judgment layer.
- One Academy course per weak domain (targeted, not completionist).
- Mock exam (community) → misses drive the final review → Cram Sheet.
⚠️ Freshness rule: prices, retake windows, and course lists change; the Partner Academy page at registration time is the only binding source for logistics. The concepts in this guide are durable; re-verify the logistics the day you book.