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CCDV-F · blueprint

Every CCDV-F objective, and what it is worth

Claude Certified Developer — Foundations publishes 24 objectives across 8 domains. This is all of them, with the weight each carries and roughly how many of the 53 questions that weight buys.

How to read this

The weights are the exam's own, not ours. They matter because study time spent proportionally to interest rather than to weight is the most common way a well-prepared candidate still fails: a full mark on the lightest objective here is worth less than a single question in the heaviest.

The question counts are the weight applied to a 53-item sitting. Treat them as the shape of the exam rather than a guarantee: a given sitting varies, and an objective worth 2.4 questions will sometimes ask two and sometimes three.

Domain 1 — Agents and Workflows

14.7% of the exam · about 8 of 53 questions · 3 objectives

Objective Weight Questions
Agent Construction with Claude 5.3% 2.8
Agent Patterns and Frameworks 4.9% 2.6
Agent Architecture 4.5% 2.4

Domain 2 — Applications and Integration

33.1% of the exam · about 18 of 53 questions · 6 objectives

Objective Weight Questions
Claude Application Design 8.6% 4.6
Software Engineering Foundations 7.4% 3.9
Claude API Mechanics 6.8% 3.6
Configuration Management 4.1% 2.2
Understanding Requirements 3.4% 1.8
Systems Life Cycle 2.8% 1.5

Domain 3 — Claude Code

3.1% of the exam · about 2 of 53 questions · 1 objective

Objective Weight Questions
Claude Code Operation 3.1% 1.6

Domain 4 — Eval, Testing, and Debugging

2.6% of the exam · about 1 of 53 questions · 1 objective

Objective Weight Questions
Debugging and Error Handling 2.6% 1.4

Domain 5 — Model Selection and Optimization

16.8% of the exam · about 9 of 53 questions · 3 objectives

Objective Weight Questions
Technical Fundamentals 7.3% 3.9
LLM Fundamentals 6.2% 3.3
Model Selection and Tradeoffs 3.2% 1.7

Domain 6 — Prompt and Context Engineering

11.0% of the exam · about 6 of 53 questions · 3 objectives

Objective Weight Questions
Prompt Engineering 4.6% 2.4
Context Engineering 3.8% 2.0
Output Handling 2.6% 1.4

Domain 7 — Security and Safety

8.1% of the exam · about 4 of 53 questions · 4 objectives

Objective Weight Questions
AI Application Security 3.2% 1.7
Guardrails and Safe Deployment 2.3% 1.2
Identity, Secrets, and Key Management 1.6% 0.8
Claude Hooks 1.0% 0.5

Domain 8 — Tools and MCPs

10.6% of the exam · about 6 of 53 questions · 3 objectives

Objective Weight Questions
Tool Implementation 4.4% 2.3
Agentic Customization 4.1% 2.2
MCP Server Development 2.1% 1.1

What to do with it

Claude Application Design is the single heaviest objective at 8.6% — about 4.6 questions. Being weak there costs more than being weak anywhere else on this page, and it is worth knowing before you plan a revision week.

Knowing the weights is not the same as knowing where you stand against them. Our CCDV-F bank draws items in these proportions and re-estimates each objective after every sitting, so a scaled estimate accounts for what the exam actually asks rather than for what you happened to practise.