Scenario 3: Multi-Agent Research System
Claude Certified Architect - Foundations (CCAR-F)
Scenario 3: Multi-Agent Research System
You are building a multi-agent research system using the Claude Agent SDK. A coordinator agent delegates to specialized subagents: one searches the web, one analyzes documents, one synthesizes findings, and one generates reports. The system researches topics and produces comprehensive, cited reports.
Passage quoted verbatim from the official CCAR-F exam guide v1.0, section 5.
This scenario on the exam
- 3 of 6 — four are dealt at random
- 3
- 47
Primary domains
- Agentic Architecture & Orchestration
- Tool Design & MCP Integration
- Context Management & Reliability
What the exam asks inside this context
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What a subagent inherits. Nothing. Not the parent conversation, not earlier findings, not memory between invocations — so the synthesis subagent gets the complete prior findings in its prompt or it does not have them.
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Decomposition that covers. Slice a topic too narrowly and every slice is complete while the cross-cutting question is owned by nobody. Partition scope, by subtopic or by source type, before the subagents start.
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Errors that a coordinator can act on. Failure type, what was attempted, partial results, alternatives. A generic 'search unavailable' is technically true and useless.
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Provenance through synthesis. Claim-source mappings with URLs, document names and excerpts, preserved and merged rather than compressed away — plus dates, so a year-old figure is not read as a contradiction.