02 — 4-week canonical · recommended
Four weeks, one theme each.
Each week has one focus and one output. If you miss the output, repeat the week rather than moving on.
Week1
Foundations and diagnostic~10 h
Take the 10-Q diagnostic before reading anything. practice/diagnostic ↗
Claude 101, the agentic-loop primitive and stop_reason handling. concepts/agentic-loops ↗
Master one concept end to end so you know what 'mastered' means here. knowledge/claude-101 ↗
Done when · Complete the scheduled reading and targeted practice
Week2
D2 Applications & Integration, full week~12 h
Subagent context isolation and escalation triggers. concepts/subagents ↗
Tool descriptions as the selector; the 18-tool cliff; structured error contracts; tool_choice modes. concepts/tool-calling ↗
Two warm-up drills, one per domain. practice/warm-up ↗
Done when · Complete the scheduled reading and targeted practice
Week3
D5 Model Selection & Optimization and D1 Agents & Workflows~12 h
CLAUDE.md hierarchy, hooks over prompt rules, slash-command scoping, Plan Mode, CI with -p. concepts/hooks ↗
tool_use as structured output, schema-validation retry loops, few-shot for ambiguous tasks. concepts/structured-outputs ↗
Sunday: first timed full-length mock. Review every miss against its concept page. practice ↗
Done when · Complete the scheduled reading and targeted practice
Week4
D6-D8, D3-D4 (the lighter domains), then synthesis~10 h
Case-facts block, compaction that keeps identifiers, prompt caching breakpoints. concepts/case-facts-block ↗
Walk 4–6 of the 13 scenarios. scenarios ↗
Final 60-Q mock under exam conditions, then the readiness gate. exam-guide/day-of ↗
Done when · Full 53-question mock and readiness review
03 — Final readiness gate
Book the exam when all four are true.
Mock score of 850 or higher on the most recent attempt.
No domain below 70% on the mock's domain breakdown.
You can explain the critical CCD-F anti-patterns without notes.
Day-of checklist read, browser test passed, room confirmed.
04 — If you're between two paths
Three rules.
01
Diagnostic score is the tiebreaker.
≥75% → 2-week or 4-week. 50–75% → 4-week. <50% → 8-week.
02
Hours available wins ties.
If you can't commit 10 hours a week, do not pick the 4-week plan. The 8-week plan covers the same material sustainably.
03
Hands-on experience is the third lever.
If you already work with Claude in the role CCD-F targets, you can compress. If you don't, you cannot, regardless of diagnostic score.
05 — By experience level
How long to prepare.
Two to three weeks is typical if you already build with Claude day to day. Most domains map onto lived experience - concentrate compression time on Applications & Integration (33.1% of the exam, the heaviest domain), where exam framing tends to diverge most from day-to-day intuition.
Don't know your score yet?
Ten questions, ten minutes, no account. Then pick the path above.