AI CERTIFICATION PREPARATION
AI certification curriculum
Free, independent learning paths for the certifications shaping AI engineering.
Anthropic
Claude Certification Curriculum A free, open-source path from first Claude workflows to production architecture, mapped to all four public Claude certification blueprints.
Claude Certified Associate - Foundations: Use Claude safely and effectively for business, research, analysis, and productivity workflows.
Claude Certified Developer - Foundations: Build, integrate, secure, test, and ship Claude applications, agents, workflows, tools, and MCP servers.
Claude Certified Architect - Foundations: Make sound production tradeoffs across Claude Code, the Claude Agent SDK, the Claude API, and MCP.
Study the Decisions, Not the Vocabulary Choose the Smallest Surface That Can Carry the Work Spend Capability Where Failure Is Expensive Turn a Request Into a Testable Contract Put Each Fact in the Right Kind of Context Validate the Claim, Not the Confidence The Messages API Is a State Machine Structured Output Is an Untrusted Contract A Tool Loop Is Controlled Delegation MCP Separates Capability From Host The Agent SDK Is a Harness, Not Permission Security Lives Outside the Prompt Evals Turn Agent Behavior Into Engineering Evidence Claude Code Scales Through Shared Constraints Multi-Agent Orchestration and Delegation Agent SDK Sessions, Subagents, and Context Tool Contracts, Errors, and Progressive Discovery Claude Code Memory, Rules, Skills, and CI Reliable Extraction, Batch, and Independent Reviewers Make Large Context Observable Defend One Architecture Across Six Contexts
Claude Certified Architect - Professional: Own the full lifecycle of secure, observable, production-grade Claude systems from discovery to iteration.
Study the Decisions, Not the Vocabulary Business Discovery, Requirements, and SLAs End-to-End Architecture and Value Tradeoffs Choose the Smallest Surface That Can Carry the Work Spend Capability Where Failure Is Expensive Turn a Request Into a Testable Contract Put Each Fact in the Right Kind of Context Validate the Claim, Not the Confidence Put Authority Around Capability The Messages API Is a State Machine Structured Output Is an Untrusted Contract A Tool Loop Is Controlled Delegation MCP Separates Capability From Host The Agent SDK Is a Harness, Not Permission Security Lives Outside the Prompt Evals Turn Agent Behavior Into Engineering Evidence Claude Code Scales Through Shared Constraints Multi-Agent Orchestration and Delegation Tool Contracts, Errors, and Progressive Discovery RAG, Retrieval, and Data Pipelines Integration Protocols, Identity, and Least Privilege Production Observability, Latency, and Cost Enterprise Governance, Compliance, and Human Review Stakeholder Communication, ADRs, and Lifecycle Ownership Architect Professional System Capstone
Agentic AI Foundation
MCPA Certification Curriculum A free, open-source path to the Model Context Protocol Associate exam, built by implementing MCP hosts, clients, servers, and tools against the 2026-07-28 specification.
Model Context Protocol Associate: Prove you understand how the Model Context Protocol works: its hosts, clients, servers, and tools, the message flow and…
The MCPA Blueprint Is a Study Budget, Not a Checklist Reading the MCP Specification The Integration Problem MCP Solves The JSON-RPC Envelope The Stateless Core of MCP Telling a Modern MCP Server From a Legacy One Hosts, Clients, and Servers: MCP's Process Topology Discovering a Server and Negotiating What It Can Do The Contract Inside a Tool Definition Reading a Server Manifest Like a Reviewer The Model Interaction Flow The Tools Primitive: Calling Actions and Reading Their Results Resources: Addressable Content for a Stateless Server Prompt Templates and Argument Completion Multi Round-Trip Requests and Elicitation Deprecated, Not Removed: Roots, Sampling, and Logging The Subscription Stream: Notifications, Progress, and Cancellation The Tool Invocation Lifecycle Two Ways for a Request to Fail Transports and the HTTP Header Contract Cache Freshness and Cursor-Based Pagination Long-Running Work and the Tasks Extension Trust Zones in an MCP Exchange Authorizing Access to an MCP Server Proving a Client's Identity to an Authorization Server Consent and Least Privilege Risk and Safety Controls for MCP Tool Calls One Trace ID Ties Auditability to Observability Every MUST Needs an Owner Choosing MCP's Shape for the Job The Extensions Framework Interactive Interfaces Inside the Conversation Finding, Routing To, and Trusting a Server Reading One MCP Exchange End to End
HOW THIS WORKS
Learn. Build. Decide under pressure.
01 Learn the mechanism Study the concepts behind the blueprint instead of memorizing product vocabulary.
02 Build the system Use labs and artifacts to make architecture, tooling, evaluation, and safety decisions concrete.
03 Practice the judgment Use original scenarios, timed mocks, and domain feedback to find your weak decisions.
Independent preparation
This is an independent, open-source learning resource. It is not an official exam, is not affiliated with or endorsed by any certification provider, and cannot guarantee a passing result. Registration, eligibility, fees, and official scoring remain with each exam provider.