Add Real-Time AI News to Claude Desktop in 30 Seconds (MCP)

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) lets Claude Desktop connect to external tools and data sources without writing any code. wpnews ships a ready-to-use MCP server with 61 news tools — install it in under a minute.

Prerequisites

• Claude Desktop (macOS or Windows) — download here
• Node.js 18+ (for npx) — nodejs.org
• A free wpnews API key — get one here (instant, no card)

Installation

1 Install the MCP server package

Run this in your terminal to install globally:

npx -y wpnews-mcp

This downloads and runs the server once to verify it works. You should see a confirmation message.

2 Configure Claude Desktop

Open (or create) ~/.claude/claude_desktop_config.json and add the wpnews server:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "wpnews": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "wpnews-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "WPNEWS_API_KEY": "YOUR_KEY_HERE"
      }
    }
  }
}

Replace YOUR_KEY_HERE with your wpnews API key. On Windows, the config file is at %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json.

3 Restart Claude Desktop

Quit and reopen Claude Desktop. You should see a hammer icon (🔨) in the bottom-left corner of the chat window, indicating MCP tools are loaded.

4 Try it

Type any of these into Claude Desktop:

• "What's the latest AI news today?"
• "Give me a briefing on OpenAI news from the last 48 hours."
• "What topics are trending in AI right now?"
• "Is there a news burst happening right now?" (uses get_news_velocity)
• "Track Anthropic and show me their last 10 news mentions."

All 65 MCP tools

The wpnews MCP server provides tools organized by category:

• News retrieval — get_news, search_news, get_trending_news, get_recent_articles, get_article
• Entity tracking — get_entity_news, get_entity_brief, get_entity_pulse, get_trending_entities, compare_entities
• Topic analytics — get_radar, get_topic_digest, get_topics_heatmap, get_topic_narrative
• Smart context — get_adaptive_context (auto-budget), get_news_velocity (burst detection), get_pulse
• Digests — get_daily_brief, get_slack_digest, get_email_digest, get_voice_digest
• Watchlist — get_watchlist_digest, watchlist_add, watchlist_list, watchlist_delete

Browse all tools at wpnews.pro/tools.

Using Cursor instead of Claude Desktop

The same config works in Cursor. Add to your Cursor MCP settings (Settings → Features → MCP Servers):

{
  "wpnews": {
    "command": "npx",
    "args": ["-y", "wpnews-mcp"],
    "env": { "WPNEWS_API_KEY": "YOUR_KEY_HERE" }
  }
}