This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.

Prepare for the Claude Certified Architect – Foundations exam while building a practical Claude-powered application from the ground up.

This course goes beyond memorizing certification terminology. You will build ShopAssist AI, a realistic customer support assistant for an online store, and gradually develop it into a structured, tool-enabled, and production-oriented Claude system.

You will begin with the foundations of large language models and the Claude API, including API requests, multi-turn conversations, system prompts, model settings, and prompt evaluation. From there, you will learn how to generate reliable structured outputs, validate model responses, implement retry logic, and combine automated evaluation with human review.

As the project develops, you will connect Claude to external capabilities through tool use and Model Context Protocol concepts. You will design clear tool schemas, execute tool calls, configure access, handle structured errors, and build controlled agentic loops.

You will then explore more advanced architecture patterns, including coordinators, subagents, task decomposition, hooks, approval gates, handoffs, session state, context passing, scratchpads, and long-running workflows.

The course also covers practical Claude Code workflows, including:

• CLAUDE configuration, rules, and memory

• Session resume, compact, forks, and scratchpads

• Commands, skills, plan mode, and iterative refinement

• Claude Code integration with CI/CD and independent review

The curriculum is aligned with the five major certification domains:

Agentic Architecture and Orchestration
Design coordinated workflows using agentic loops, subagents, task delegation, context management, and controlled handoffs.

Tool Design and MCP Integration
Create effective tools, define schemas, configure access, manage MCP connections, and handle recoverable errors.

Claude Code Configuration and Workflows
Configure Claude Code for individual and team development workflows, project consistency, and automated review.

Prompt Engineering and Structured Output
Write clear prompts, apply few-shot examples and XML structure, generate schema-compliant outputs, and evaluate response quality.

Context Management and Reliability
Apply escalation, confidence handling, provenance, human review, error propagation, and production reliability patterns.

By the end of the course, you will be able to connect the certification concepts to real Claude application architecture. You will understand not only what the exam topics mean, but how they work together inside a practical, testable, and more production-ready AI system.

This course is ideal for developers, AI engineers, solution architects, technical consultants, and professionals preparing for the Claude Certified Architect – Foundations exam or building applications with Claude, MCP, agentic workflows, and Claude Code.