mcp-news 1.0.0

MCP server that collects articles from 1100+ RSS feeds across 150+ countries

MCP News Feeds

An MCP server that collects articles from over 1100 RSS feeds distributed across 150+ countries, sourced from the community registry news-feed-list-of-countries.

Quick Start (uvx)

No installation needed — just configure your MCP client:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "news-feeds": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["mcp-news"]
    }
  }
}

uvx will automatically download and run the server.

Installation from source

git clone https://github.com/benjaminmarchand/mcp-news.git
cd mcp-news
pip install -e .

Then configure your MCP client:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "news-feeds": {
      "command": "mcp-news"
    }
  }
}

Usage

The server runs on stdio and exposes 6 tools:

Tool	Description
news_feed	Retrieves recent articles, filterable by country, time window, and limit
news_fetch_article	Returns the full, untruncated description of a specific article
news_feed_countries	Lists all available countries with the number of feeds per country
news_feed_health	Shows feed reliability stats: healthy, unhealthy, and dead feeds
news_feed_invalidate_cache	Clears the registry cache to force a reload

Example Calls

Retrieve French news from the last 12 hours:

{
  "name": "news_feed",
  "arguments": {
    "countries": ["France"],
    "hours": 12,
    "limit": 50
  }
}

Get the full description of an article:

{
  "name": "news_fetch_article",
  "arguments": {
    "url": "https://example.com/article/123"
  }
}

Check feed health for a country:

{
  "name": "news_feed_health",
  "arguments": {
    "country": "France"
  }
}

List available countries:

{
  "name": "news_feed_countries"
}

Response Truncation

Responses are automatically truncated to fit MCP client limits (~40,000 characters). When the payload is too large, descriptions are progressively shortened, then articles are dropped from the tail. Use news_fetch_article to retrieve the full description of a specific article.

Feed Health Tracking

The server tracks the success/failure history of each feed in ~/.mcp-news/feed_health.json. Feeds with 10 or more consecutive errors are automatically skipped during collection. Use the news_feed_health tool to inspect feed reliability.

Cache

The RSS feed registry is cached in ~/.mcp-news/cache/. The cache is valid for 24 hours and refreshes automatically when the remote registry changes (SHA-1 comparison).

To force a refresh:

export NEWS_FEED_BYPASS_CACHE=true

Command-Line Options

Option	Description
--verbose	Enable verbose logging and write fetched articles to ~/.mcp-news/logs/ as timestamped JSON files

Example with verbose mode:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "news-feeds": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["mcp-news", "--verbose"]
    }
  }
}

Testing

pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest tests/

Environment Variables

Variable	Description
NEWS_FEEDS_JSON_URL	Override the feeds registry URL (default: raw GitHub URL from cyberbobjr/news-feed-list-of-countries)
NEWS_FEED_BYPASS_CACHE	Set to true to ignore cache and always re-download the registry
MCP_NEWS_DATA_DIR	Override the data directory (default: ~/.mcp-news)