50 Claude Certified Architect Practice Questions (All 5 Domains)

Questions

1. You are building a customer support agent that handles refund requests. The agent looks up orders, checks return windows, and processes refunds. Refunds over $500 require manager approval. What is the best architectural approach?

A. A single agent with all tools and conditional logic in the system prompt

B. Two agents handing off, one for lookup and one for processing

C. A single agent with a subagent invoked specifically for the manager approval flow

D. Multiple agents sharing state through a scratchpad file

2. Your agentic loop is processing a customer query. The model returns a response with stop_reason of tool_use. What should your loop do next?

A. Terminate the loop and return the response to the user

B. Execute the requested tool call, append the result, and continue the loop

C. Increment a retry counter and re-prompt the model

D. Save the state and escalate to a human reviewer

3. You have an agent making three tool calls in sequence. The second tool call fails with a transient network error. What is the correct handling pattern?

A. Terminate the entire agent session and surface the error to the user

B. Return a structured error to the model, marked retryable, and let the agent decide whether to retry

C. Retry the tool call silently up to three times before continuing

D. Replace the failed tool result with an empty response and continue

4. A document analysis agent is taking too long because each tool call returns large verbose outputs that fill the context. What is the best architectural fix?

A. Truncate tool outputs to the first 500 characters before passing to the model

B. Spawn a subagent to extract only the structured facts the main agent needs

C. Increase the model's context window to the maximum available

D. Reduce the number of tool calls per agent loop iteration

5. You are designing an agent that must run unattended overnight processing thousands of records. Which design pattern is most appropriate?

A. A single long-running agent loop with progress logging

B. Batch the records and use the Message Batches API with structured output schemas

C. Spawn one subagent per record in parallel

D. Process records sequentially with full conversational history retained

6. Your agent is given a vague user request that could be interpreted three different ways. What is the strongest design choice?

A. Have the agent pick the most likely interpretation and proceed

B. Build a clarifying subagent that asks the user one targeted question before proceeding

C. Process all three interpretations in parallel and present all results

D. Reject the request and ask the user to be more specific

7. You are designing escalation logic for an agent. Which scenario most clearly warrants escalation to a human?

A. The agent has tried the same tool twice and got the same transient error

B. The user asked a question outside the agent's defined scope

C. The agent's confidence score for its proposed action is below the configured threshold

D. The agent has been running for more than five minutes

8. A subagent is spawned to handle a specialised refund approval flow. After the subagent completes, what is the correct way to return control to the main agent?

A. The subagent writes its result to a shared file and the main agent polls for completion

B. The subagent returns a structured result that the main agent receives as a tool response

C. The subagent terminates the main agent and starts a new session

D. The main agent resumes the subagent's full conversation history and continues

9. Which agentic loop termination condition is most reliable across diverse use cases?

A. A fixed maximum number of loop iterations

B. Checking the model's stop_reason for end_turn

C. A timer that ends the loop after a set duration

D. A confidence threshold on the most recent model output

10. You are building an agent that interacts with a customer over multiple sessions across days. What is the best pattern for session continuity?

A. Persist the full conversation history and replay it at each new session

B. Extract structured facts at the end of each session and load only those facts at the start of the next

C. Start each session with no history and rely on the user to re-explain context

D. Store the agent's last response only and use it as the starting context

11. An agent has been delegated a task that requires three different specialised capabilities. What is the strongest architectural choice?

A. One agent with three separate tools

B. Three subagents called in sequence by an orchestrator agent

C. Three independent agents running in parallel without coordination

D. One agent that switches its system prompt between three modes

12. Your agent has just produced an output that the validation step rejected. What is the best next step?

A. Return the rejection error to the user and end the session

B. Pass the rejection reason back to the agent and let it generate a corrected output

C. Silently retry the same prompt up to five times

D. Reduce the temperature setting and re-run the same prompt

13. You are deciding whether to use a multi-agent system or a single agent with multiple tools. Which factor most strongly favours multi-agent design?

A. The task involves more than five tools

B. Different parts of the task require fundamentally different reasoning patterns or context

C. The user prefers seeing intermediate progress

D. The total token cost is high

14. What is the most important advantage of structured handoff between subagents over shared state in a file?

A. Lower memory usage

B. Easier debugging through explicit data contracts

C. Faster execution time

D. Reduced API costs

15. You are setting up Claude Code for a large monorepo with multiple teams. Where should the highest-precedence configuration live?

A. The user's global home directory

B. The repo root CLAUDE.md file

C. A path-specific .claude/rules file inside each team's subdirectory

D. The system prompt at runtime

16. Your team wants Claude Code to never modify production deployment files unless explicitly requested. What is the best implementation?

A. Add a verbal warning in CLAUDE.md

B. Create a path-specific rule in .claude/rules/ scoped to the deployment directory

C. Change the file permissions on the deployment files

D. Train team members to manually approve deployment changes

17. You are building a custom skill that should run with elevated tool permissions but should not pollute the parent context with its intermediate work. Which frontmatter configuration achieves this?

A. context: parent, allowed-tools: all

B. context: fork, allowed-tools: explicit list

C. context: shared, allowed-tools: read-only

D. context: isolated, allowed-tools: none

18. Your CLAUDE.md says one thing about test naming. A path-specific rule in .claude/rules/tests.md says something different. Which takes precedence?

A. CLAUDE.md, because it is the project-level configuration

B. The path-specific rule, because more specific scope wins

C. Whichever rule was edited most recently

D. They are merged, with conflicts flagged to the user

19. You want Claude Code to integrate with your team's Jira instance for ticket lookup. What is the correct integration pattern?

A. Add Jira credentials directly to CLAUDE.md

B. Configure a Jira MCP server and reference it in your project configuration

C. Have the user paste ticket content manually each time

D. Build a custom Python script that wraps the Jira API

20. A junior developer keeps committing code that breaks linting rules. You want Claude Code to catch this before commit. Which integration is most appropriate?

A. A custom skill that runs on demand

B. A Claude Code hook configured to run on pre-commit

C. A CLAUDE.md rule asking the agent to remember to lint

D. A separate manual review step

21. Your project has highly sensitive customer data. You want Claude Code to never echo customer data into chat logs. What is the strongest enforcement?

A. A rule in CLAUDE.md asking the agent not to echo data

B. A path-specific rule in .claude/rules/ targeting the data directories, plus an allowed-tools restriction

C. Encrypting the customer data files

D. Disabling Claude Code in those directories entirely

22. You are designing a CI pipeline that uses Claude Code for automated code review on every pull request. What is the most reliable pattern?

A. Run Claude Code interactively in the CI shell

B. Run Claude Code in non-interactive mode with a defined skill that produces structured review output

C. Have a developer run Claude Code locally and paste output into the PR

D. Skip Claude Code in CI and only use it during development

23. Your custom skill needs three specific tools but should not have access to file deletion. Which approach is correct?

A. Use context: fork with allowed-tools listing only the three tools needed

B. Use context: parent and rely on the model to avoid file deletion

C. Use context: shared with all tools enabled

D. Run the skill in a separate process with no tool access

24. You want a custom skill to be discoverable across multiple projects without copying it into each repo. Where should it live?

A. A user-level skills directory referenced by all projects

B. The .claude/rules directory of each project

C. The CLAUDE.md file of each project

D. A shared cloud document linked in each project

25. You have two MCP tools: search_orders and get_order_details. Users frequently ask vague questions and the agent picks the wrong tool roughly 30% of the time. What is the most effective fix?

A. Combine them into a single tool with optional parameters

B. Rewrite both tool descriptions with explicit boundary conditions and example inputs

C. Add a third orchestration tool that decides which to call

D. Add system prompt instructions clarifying when to use each tool

26. A tool returns an error when the input order ID does not exist. What error category and retryable flag should it use?

A. errorCategory: transient, isRetryable: true

B. errorCategory: validation, isRetryable: false

C. errorCategory: validation, isRetryable: true

D. errorCategory: transient, isRetryable: false

27. You are designing a tool description for an MCP server. Which element is most critical for reliable tool selection by the model?

A. The tool's parameter type definitions

B. A clear description of what the tool does and when to use it

C. The tool's response format

D. The tool's authentication method

28. A tool fails because the upstream service is temporarily unreachable. What error response design is correct?

A. Return a plain string with the error message

B. Return a structured response with errorCategory: transient, isRetryable: true, and a human-readable description

C. Throw an unhandled exception so the agent tool call fails

D. Return null and let the agent infer what happened

29. You are building a tool that takes a customer query and returns relevant orders. The query is sometimes ambiguous. How should the tool handle ambiguity?

A. Return the best guess with a confidence score

B. Return the top three possible matches with structured metadata so the agent can disambiguate

C. Reject the query and ask the agent to refine it

D. Return an empty result with no error

30. Your MCP server exposes ten tools. The agent is sometimes selecting tools that are clearly not appropriate for the request. What is the strongest first intervention?

A. Reduce the number of tools exposed to only the most likely candidates

B. Audit the tool descriptions for overlap and rewrite for clarity and differentiation

C. Add explicit tool selection rules to the system prompt

D. Switch to a more capable model

31. You have a tool that updates customer records. It is critical that the agent never calls this tool without first confirming with the user. What is the most robust enforcement?

A. Add a note in the tool description asking the agent to confirm

B. Implement a confirmation step inside the tool itself, returning a confirmation request before executing the update

C. Set a high temperature to make the agent more cautious

D. Use a separate read-only model for any task involving updates

32. Which MCP tool design pattern most effectively prevents the agent from using a tool in unintended ways?

A. Limiting the tool's input parameters and clearly documenting each parameter's purpose and constraints

B. Adding a verbose disclaimer in the tool description

C. Increasing the cost of the tool to discourage frequent use

D. Hiding the tool behind a wrapper tool

33. Your tool needs to return a result that the agent will summarise for the user. The result has both structured data and a free text explanation. What is the best response format?

A. Free text only, with structure expressed in prose

B. A JSON object containing both the structured data and the free text fields

C. Two separate tool calls, one for data and one for text

D. A binary blob the agent must decode

34. You are extracting customer information from incoming emails. Some emails do not include a phone number. How should you design the JSON schema field for phone number?

A. Required string, default empty

B. Optional string, nullable, with no default

C. Required string with a placeholder value when missing

D. Omit the field entirely from the schema

35. Your structured output validation fails 20% of the time because the model includes extra fields not in the schema. What is the most reliable fix?

A. Catch the validation error and prompt the model to retry with the correction

B. Loosen the schema to allow additional properties

C. Lower the model's temperature

D. Use a different model

36. You are processing one million customer reviews to extract sentiment. Each review is independent. Which approach is most cost-effective?

A. Real-time API calls in a loop

B. The Message Batches API with structured output schemas

C. A single API call with all reviews concatenated

D. A separate model fine-tuned on sentiment analysis

37. You are using few-shot prompting to teach the model how to handle ambiguous refund requests. How many examples typically provide the strongest results without bloating context?

A. One representative example

B. Three to five varied examples covering edge cases

C. Twenty examples for full coverage

D. No examples, rely on the system prompt only

38. Your code review agent is producing too many false positives, flagging code that does not actually have problems. What is the most effective architectural fix?

A. Lower the model's temperature

B. Add a multi-pass review architecture where a second pass validates the first pass's flags against explicit criteria

C. Reduce the agent's context window

D. Train a smaller specialised model

39. You need the model to return structured data, but occasionally the source content does not contain the data. What is the best schema design?

A. Required fields with empty strings as defaults when data is missing

B. All fields nullable, with a separate boolean indicating extraction confidence

C. A wrapper object with a status field (success or insufficient_data) and a data field

D. Two separate schemas, one for success and one for failure cases

40. You are designing few-shot examples for an extraction task. Which is the most important property of strong examples?

A. They cover the easiest cases first

B. They cover the actual edge cases and ambiguities the model is likely to encounter

C. They use the longest possible inputs

D. They mirror the format of the model's training data

41. A validation retry loop has retried three times and the model is still producing invalid output. What should happen next?

A. Continue retrying indefinitely

B. Escalate to a human reviewer with the full context, the model's outputs, and the validation errors

C. Lower the schema strictness and accept the latest output

D. Restart the entire conversation from scratch

42. You are designing structured output for a tool that returns search results. Which schema pattern best handles variable result counts?

A. A fixed array of ten results with empty objects for unused slots

B. An array of result objects with a separate total_count field

C. A single concatenated string with results separated by newlines

D. Ten separate fields named result_1 through result_10

43. You want the model to extract information but only with high confidence. What is the most reliable design?

A. Add explicit instructions to the system prompt to be conservative

B. Include a confidence field in the schema and provide few-shot examples showing when to mark fields null due to low confidence

C. Use a smaller model that hallucinates less

D. Run the same prompt twice and only accept matching results

44. Your agent processes long support transcripts. After about 30 minutes of continuous operation, agent responses become unreliable due to context bloat. What is the best fix?

A. Increase the model's context window

B. Truncate the oldest messages in the conversation

C. Extract structured facts from each transcript, pass those to a subagent, and discard the verbose original

D. Reset the session every ten minutes

45. A tool returns 10,000 tokens of verbose log data. The agent only needs to know whether any errors occurred. What is the best handling pattern?

A. Pass the full log into the agent context

B. Use a subagent to summarise the log into a structured fact (errors_present: boolean, error_count: integer) and pass only that to the main agent

C. Truncate the log to the last 500 tokens

D. Store the log in a file and only show the agent the file path

46. You are designing a long-running agent that must remember key facts across many tool calls. What is the strongest pattern for context preservation?

A. Keep the full conversation history in context

B. Maintain a scratchpad file that the agent reads from and writes to as needed

C. Encode all facts into the system prompt before each tool call

D. Run the agent with the maximum context window setting

47. Your agent has produced three candidate answers to a complex question. You want to reduce false positives before showing the answer to the user. What pattern is most reliable?

A. Pick the answer the agent generated first

B. Use a multi-pass review where a second model invocation evaluates each candidate against explicit review criteria

C. Use majority voting across the three candidates

D. Always pick the longest answer because it is most thorough

48. Your agent is failing intermittently because tool outputs sometimes exceed the available context. What is the best architectural change?

A. Reduce the number of tools the agent has access to

B. Have the tool return a summary by default, with a separate flag the agent can set to request the full output

C. Increase the model's context window

D. Cache tool outputs and pass references rather than full content

49. You are designing a customer support agent that handles thousands of sessions per day. Reliability is critical. Which pattern most reduces single-point-of-failure risk?

A. A single agent with extensive error handling

B. Multiple specialised subagents with explicit handoffs and structured error responses between them

C. A single large model invocation with all logic in the prompt

D. Multiple agents running in parallel on every request

50. What is the strongest indicator that a long-running agent needs a context management redesign?

A. The agent's responses are slow

B. The agent's accuracy degrades over the course of a session

C. The agent uses more tokens than expected

D. The agent makes more tool calls than expected

Answer Key

1.C; 2. B; 3. B; 4. B; 5. B; 6. B; 7. C; 8. B; 9. B; 10. B; 11. B; 12. B; 13. B; 14. B; 15. C; 16. B; 17. B; 18. B; 19. B; 20. B; 21. B; 22. B; 23. A; 24. A; 25. B; 26. B; 27. B; 28. B; 29. B; 30. B; 31. B; 32. A; 33. B; 34. B; 35. A; 36. B; 37. B; 38. B; 39. C; 40. B; 41. B; 42. B; 43. B; 44. C; 45. B; 46. B; 47. B; 48. B; 49. B; 50. B