AI-103 cheat sheet
Last-minute reference for AI-103. Everything here is covered in depth in the other guides in this section; this page is for the night before.
Exam facts
| Duration | 120 minutes |
| Passing score | 700 / 1000 |
| Price (US) | $165 |
| Replaces | AI-102, retired 30 June 2026 |
Domain weights
| Skill area | Weight |
|---|---|
| Implement generative AI and agentic solutions | 30–35% |
| Plan and manage an Azure AI solution | 25–30% |
| Implement computer vision solutions | 10–15% |
| Implement text analysis solutions | 10–15% |
| Implement information extraction solutions | 10–15% |
The top two are over half the exam. Spend your time accordingly.
Distinctions the exam tests
| A | B | When A wins |
|---|---|---|
| RAG | Fine-tuning | Source content changes; no retraining budget |
| Groundedness | Relevance | Asking whether the answer is supported by sources |
| Managed identity | Key or SAS | Any “no secrets in code or config” requirement |
| Object detection | Image classification | You need the location, not just the label |
| Custom NER | Key phrase extraction | Mapping text to your own taxonomy |
| Document extraction | Plain OCR | You need structured fields, not raw text |
Recurring right answers
- Managed identity for any credential-storage question
- Retrieve only relevant passages for any prompt-cost question
- Smaller chunks with overlap when retrieval returns topically related but useless passages
- Treat retrieved content as untrusted data against prompt injection
- Human confirmation before the action executes for consequential tool calls
- Exponential backoff on HTTP 429, not tight retries
- PII detection and redaction before storage, not summarisation
Traps
- Region choice is driven by model availability plus data residency — not latency or price.
- 429 means quota, not a broken service.
- Groundedness high, relevance low means faithful answers to the wrong question, so look at retrieval.
- Both input and output tokens are billed. Long prompts are the usual cost driver.
- Fine-tuning does not add knowledge reliably — it changes style and format.
Night-before checklist
- Re-read the skills outline and confirm the weights have not moved
- Know the five domains by name and weight
- Be able to explain RAG end to end in two sentences
- Check your ID matches your registration exactly — see exam day
Take the 20-question practice test if you have not already. Under fourteen and you are not ready.