Claude Certification
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2026-02-12 · claudecert.com

Setting up your prep environment

Get an Anthropic API key, a sandbox repo, and Claude Code wired up before you read anything else. You'll absorb 2-3x more.

Reading about agents without building tiny ones is like reading about cycling. You'll forget half of it. Spend the first hour of your prep on environment setup so every concept lands against working code.

Bare minimum

  1. API key — platform.claude.com, free credits cover all prep needs.
  2. Sandbox repo — a tiny Node or Python project where you can paste examples.
  3. Claude Code — install the CLI; this is the harness most exam scenarios assume.
  4. MCP test server — npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector to poke at MCP locally.

Stretch

  • An eval harness (10 golden tasks + a script that runs them on each prompt change).
  • A simple Streamlit or Next.js page that calls Claude and renders streamed output.
  • A Drizzle-backed Postgres so you can persist agent state and try compaction yourself.

With this setup, every lesson on our site becomes a 5-minute hands-on. Without it, every lesson is just reading.