The Salesforce Platform Developer I exam is organised into four weighted sections. This is a plain-English summary of the current outline, which aligns to the Summer ‘25 Release; the official Salesforce exam guide is authoritative. Note that the guide’s title now reads “Salesforce Certified Platform Developer” without the “I” - it is the same credential, still commonly called PD1. Older material that stops at Apex and Visualforce, with no Flow, Lightning Web Components or Agentforce coverage, is out of date.
| # | Section | Official weight |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Developer Fundamentals | 27% |
| 2 | Process Automation and Logic | 28% |
| 3 | User Interface | 25% |
| 4 | Testing, Debugging, and Deployment | 20% |
1 - Developer Fundamentals (27%)
What makes the platform different from ordinary Java or C# work: multitenancy and its consequences, the MVC pattern and the Lightning Component Framework, and when to choose declarative tools over code (governor limits, formula fields, roll-up summaries). Data modelling is central: standard and custom objects, fields, lookup versus master-detail relationships, junction objects and external IDs. The newest addition is understanding the use cases and limitations of Agentforce for developers.
2 - Process Automation and Logic (28%)
The largest section, and the heart of the exam. Declarative automation capabilities and how to combine them with code; Apex fundamentals (variables, constants, methods, interfaces, control flow, collections); SOQL, SOSL and DML with their governor limits; writing triggers and classes to best practice; the save order of execution, recursion, transaction control and exception handling.
3 - User Interface (25%)
Displaying, creating and validating data in a user interface while respecting security. Custom UIs with Lightning components, Flow screens and Visualforce; the Lightning Web Components framework, its benefits and its event model; and writing the Apex that sits behind page components, including working with Agentforce.
4 - Testing, Debugging, and Deployment (20%)
Writing and executing tests for triggers, controllers, classes and flows; the tooling (Salesforce DX, the Salesforce CLI, the Developer Console); debugging and monitoring flows, performance and asynchronous or batch jobs; and the environments and process for deploying code.
What is explicitly out of scope
The official guide states that candidates are not expected to administer standard Salesforce applications, build mobile apps, publish AppExchange products, tune performance, or design integrations such as API callouts and email services. Those belong to other credentials, so do not spend PD1 study time there.