CCA-F Study Map — YouTube Course ↔ Exam ↔ Repo

Course code (pick one path):
- Tracked in this repo: claude-certified-architect/ (repo root)
- Optional clone (often gitignored): Youtube-main/claude-certified-architect/

Exam hub (HTML): index.html · cca-f-prep.html

Use this map to study in exam-domain order while following the Peace of Code playlist in episode order.

Quick start

API setup (course): pip install anthropic · ANTHROPIC_API_KEY in env · model claude-haiku-4-5 for hands-on.

Episode ↔ domain ↔ files

Transcripts: Youtube-main/claude-certified-architect/docs/Transcripts of youtube/

Later episodes (YouTube only — add locally as you go): Ep 11+ (e.g. Ep 15 few-shot → few_shot_examples.py). Playlist: Claude Certified Architect — Full Course.

Exam concepts by episode (high-signal)

Ep 01 — Agentic loop

• stop_reason: tool_use → execute tools, append results, continue; end_turn → only valid primary exit.
• Append assistant message (tool_use blocks) then user message (tool_result).
• Anti-patterns: parse natural language to exit; use MAX_ITERATIONS as primary stop; inspect content types instead of stop_reason.
• Roles: user, assistant, system; API is stateless — send full messages history.

Ep 02 — Coordinator

• Hub orchestrator + workers; Task tool; allowedTools must include "Task".
• Decompose goals, not step-by-step scripts for workers.

Ep 03 — Context & sessions

• Pass structured findings (objects), not prose dumps.
• client.beta.sessions.fork for parallel exploration from one baseline.
• On --resume, tell the agent what changed on disk.

Ep 04–05 — Capstone & hooks

• capstone_project.py ties Ep 01–05: coordinator, mock DB, PreToolUse block (e.g. high-value orders), PostToolUse normalize raw tool output.
• Four error categories: transient, permission, validation, internal.

Ep 06 — Tool routing

• Vague descriptions → wrong tool (misrouting); fix with specific descriptions and disambiguation (“USE INSTEAD of Grep when…”).

Ep 07 — tool_choice

• Force or restrict tool use when reliability matters (see tool_choice.py snippet).

Ep 08 — MCP

• Lifecycle: connect → initialize (session) → discover (tools/list) → invoke → structured results.
• .mcp.json (project, shareable) vs ~/.claude.json (personal secrets).
• Env vars: ${GITHUB_TOKEN} in JSON, not hardcoded secrets.
• stdio (local subprocess) vs HTTP/SSE (remote).
• Resources = catalog upfront (lower discovery token burn).
• toolOverrides to beat default Grep when semantic search is intended.
• No lazy-load of tools — limit tools per agent; hooks for visibility.

Ep 09 — Built-in tools

• Grep (content) vs Glob (paths); Read / Write / Edit / Bash.
• Incremental exploration: Glob → Grep → Read (don’t bulk-read huge repos).
• Exam: prefer targeted discovery over loading entire codebase.

Ep 10 — CLAUDE.md hierarchy

• Three levels: user / project / directory-specific rules.
• .claude/rules/ + YAML front matter + glob paths for conditional rules (e.g. src/**/*.ts vs terraform/**/*.tf).
• /memory to debug what loaded.
• Sample exam pattern: different rules per file type → path-scoped rules, not one giant file.

Domain ↔ course ↔ this repo

Six exam scenarios ↔ your anchors

Slide decks (local paths)

Under Youtube-main/claude-certified-architect/:

Missing numbering: no lesson 4.pptx in slide decks/ — use docs/Mayank_Chugh_Ep04_MultiAgent.pptx.

Runnable lab order (Python SDK)

# Use repo-root copy, or Youtube-main\claude-certified-architect if you have that clone
cd claude-certified-architect
python -m venv .venv
.\.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
pip install anthropic
$env:ANTHROPIC_API_KEY = "sk-ant-..."

python api_check.py
python agent.py
python capstone_project.py
python research_summarizer.py

Snippets (multi_agents.py, tool_misrouting.py, …): read alongside matching episode; do not expect python file.py to run end-to-end.

Claude Code projects (tracked)

cd examples\CCA-F-PREP\p5-custom-mcp-server
pip install -r requirements.txt
$env:MCP_API_KEY = "dev-local-key"
python verify_setup.py

cd ..\p4-claude-code-workflow
$env:MCP_API_KEY = "dev-local-key"
python verify_setup.py

Reference docs in course repo

Maintenance

Last aligned to local folder scan: Ep 01–08 complete, slides through lesson 10, code through Ep 08 + snippets for 09.