# [First look] What's on the AI Developer Cert Canonical: https://brew.new/templates/vueschool/first-look-whats-on-the-ai-developer-cert Brand: vueschool.io Category: newsletter ![Preview of [First look] What's on the AI Developer Cert](https://cdn.brew.new/email-preview-166778d953111b6a-tracking_r57tfhvjknwhmezfvbba8tk8hd8dta7g-1789071863185.png) ## Email content Hi There, For weeks we've been making the case for what an AI-era developer should be able to do. Today, the exam itself, what it tests and how it runs. It opens July 28, and the waitlist gets exclusive access. We asked before we built Before locking the exam's sections, we asked the developers on the AI Developer Certification waitlist which AI skills matter most to them. 702 answered, and the picks clustered hard. Their top picks became the exam's top sections. Six domains: Agent and workflow direction, with context engineering at its core. One domain holding the two most-picked skills, 61% each. Prompts, rules, MCP servers, guardrails, knowing when to intervene and when to let it run. Review and verification. Picked by 60%. The diff that compiles and still lies, the missing edge case, and naming the test that would have caught it. Architecture and system design. Picked by 52%. What to build, which approach holds, and whether a proposed structure scales or rots. Spec and intent. Catching the feature that's executed perfectly and is still the wrong thing, and turning fuzzy requirements into precise direction. Security and risk. The vulnerability classes that ship when nobody owns the review, like injection, auth bypass, and leaked secrets. Debugging and diagnosis. Symptom to root cause, in code you didn't write line by line. Spec, security, and debugging didn't top the vote, and the job doesn't care. They're in. How the exam runs The design rules haven't moved since I set them out. AI tools stay on, the same way they're on at work. Multiple choice alone won't get you through, there are open-ended calls you defend in writing on a real clock, and honest uncertainty still scores better than a confident miss. The exam is proctored throughout, and nothing in it is tied to one vendor's stack, so what you prove stays portable to any tool and any employer. I'm the one building it, and I'll introduce the full examination board before the exam ships. We hold this exam to the same bar as every other one we run. A first attempt that misses shows up on no public record, and you can sit it again when you're ready. See it live tomorrow Tomorrow at 15:00 CEST, in the free live session How the Best Developers Grow With AI, we make the kind of calls this exam tests, together. Real AI-written code on screen, you call ship or don't ship in the chat, then I show you what that code actually did once it shipped. The recording goes to registrants. Two hours, free, and you leave with The AI-Era Developer Playbook, the ebook we built for the session. Save your seat in one click → Alex G Technical Education Lead, certificates.dev P.S. The AI Developer Certification opens July 28, and the waitlist hears everything first. Join the waitlist in one click → -- You're getting this because you signed up at vueschool.io, part of BitterBrains. 2093 Philadelphia Pike #9442, Claymont, DE 19703, United States · Unsubscribe | Manage preferences [Open and remix this design](https://brew.new/templates/vueschool/first-look-whats-on-the-ai-developer-cert) [Browse email designs](https://brew.new/browse/templates)