Claude Certified Developer – Foundations (Anthropic, exam code CCDV-F). Exam booked for Tuesday 3 November 2026, 10:30 IST, Pearson VUE online. 53 questions · 120 min · pass 720/1000 scaled · valid 12 months.
3% of the plan complete · last updated 7 Sep 2026
Why this one
I have spent twenty years automating other people’s delivery pipelines. Over the last year the interesting problems on my projects have moved to a different layer: how to put a model like Claude into a CI/CD pipeline, a review bot, an incident-summariser, an internal agent — safely, cheaply, and in a way an SRE can operate. The CCDV-F blueprint is essentially a syllabus for exactly that, and my employer is funding the attempt, so it became the first certification I am doing in public.
The plan
9 chapters over 60 days, 1.5 h/day: 45 min docs, 45 min lab built with Claude Code on a real DevOps project. Every day has a reading list, numbered build steps and a “done when” line; every Sunday is a review day with a domain quiz and a short retrospective — that retrospective is what becomes the weekly post below.
| # | Chapter | Dates | Exam domain |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | Setup, accounts and the eligibility gate | 5–6 Sep | — |
| 1 | Messages API foundations | 7–13 Sep | Applications & Integration |
| 2 | Tool use, prompt caching, batches, production plumbing | 14–20 Sep | Applications & Integration · Tools & MCPs |
| 3 | Model selection, cost, prompt and context engineering | 21–27 Sep | Model Selection · Prompt & Context Engineering |
| 4 | Agents and workflows | 28 Sep – 4 Oct | Agents & Workflows |
| 5 | Tools and MCP | 5–11 Oct | Tools & MCPs |
| 6 | Claude Code on a real project | 12–18 Oct | Claude Code |
| 7 | Security, safety, evals, testing and debugging | 19–25 Oct | Security & Safety · Eval, Testing & Debugging |
| 8 | Practice exams and final revision | 26 Oct – 2 Nov | All domains |
| ★ | Exam day | 3 Nov | — |
Exam blueprint
| Domain | Weight |
|---|---|
| Applications & Integration | 33.1% |
| Model Selection & Optimisation | 16.8% |
| Agents & Workflows | 14.7% |
| Prompt & Context Engineering | 11.0% |
| Tools & MCPs | 10.6% |
| Security & Safety | 8.1% |
| Claude Code | 3.1% |
| Eval, Testing & Debugging | 2.6% |
What is in the tracker
The tracker is a single self-contained page: the day-by-day plan with study material per chapter, an 80-question practice bank, a spaced-repetition deck of exam traps, a per-domain readiness dashboard, a printable cheat sheet, and a library of 62 digests of the official documentation the exam draws on. Visitors see my live progress read-only; the material itself is free to use if you are preparing for the same exam. Corrections are welcome by email.
Mind maps
I learn best from mind maps, so the whole plan and study material also exist as maps: a master map of the exam and one per chapter, with the daily plan, study material, documentation digests, self-check questions and traps as branches.
Open the interactive mind maps
The same maps are available as FreeMind files for SimpleMind (File → Import → FreeMind) or any app that reads .mm:
- 00 CCDV-F Ch0 Setup, accounts and the eligibility gate
- 00 CCDV-F master map
- 01 CCDV-F Ch1 Messages API foundations
- 02 CCDV-F Ch2 Tool use, prompt caching, batches and production plumbing
- 03 CCDV-F Ch3 Model selection, cost optimisation, prompt and context engineering
- 04 CCDV-F Ch4 Agents and workflows
- 05 CCDV-F Ch5 Tools and MCP
- 06 CCDV-F Ch6 Claude Code mastery (on your real project)
- 07 CCDV-F Ch7 Security, safety, evals, testing and debugging
- 08 CCDV-F Ch8 Practice exams and final revision
- 09 CCDV-F Exam day
Weekly journal
- CCDV-F, week 0: setting up and reading the blueprint — 7 Sep 2026