When I started preparing for the Claude Certified Architect Foundations (CCA-F) exam, the first thing that surprised me was how many people were studying for it the way you'd study for a generic LLM cert: heavy on prompt engineering tricks, light on the actual architecture material.
The published blueprint tells a different story. If you let the weights drive your hours instead of your comfort zone, you end up with a very different study plan than the one most candidates are running.
This is the plan I'd give myself if I were starting over. It's six weeks, roughly 6–8 hours per week, and it's organized around the actual blueprint, not vibes.
The blueprint, before anything else
The CCA-F is a 60-question, 120-minute exam. Scoring is scaled 100–1000, with 720 to pass. The blueprint is split across five domains:
