MCP server for news
Yes, there is one. CLSTR runs a remote MCP server for news at https://mcp.clstr.news/mcp, with nothing to install. It gives your agent the shape of the reporting: which situations are developing, what many outlets report about each event, and how a situation developed over weeks.
One event covered by many outlets becomes a single cluster, deduplicated, with a source count and a significance score. Related clusters link into a situation that carries a maintained summary and a full timeline, so an agent gets memory, not just the latest headline.
Claude and ChatGPT: sign in, do not paste a key
Add CLSTR as a connector with the URL https://mcp.clstr.news/mcp and sign in when prompted. A free CLSTR account is enough, no card. The connector runs an OAuth sign-in against your account, so it gets all four tools and your plan's caps with no header to manage. Disconnect it any time under Connected apps in Settings.
Choose this lane before you add the connector: a connector added without a sign-in cannot be switched to OAuth afterwards, only removed and added again. Use the full URL including /mcp.
The four tools, and when to call each
| Tool | Call it when |
|---|---|
get_top_situations | You need what is developing now, optionally within a category, a country and a window of 24h, 7d or 30d. |
search_situations | You need coverage of a topic, entity, company, country or event. |
get_situation_timeline | You need to brief on how one situation developed: its whole history, in order. |
get_cluster | You need the detail of one event, with its underlying source articles. |
Every result carries canonical clstr.news links. Cite them, so a reader can open the sources. Each tool has a REST twin with the same fields: see the API and MCP reference.
Try it with no key
Keyless taster, to try it in 10 seconds: for curl, demos, and frameworks that cannot hold a credential. get_top_situations, get_situation_timeline answer anonymously, 10 calls per day per network (burst 5 per minute), and anonymous timelines come back at most 50 entries deep. A free key lifts that to 100 requests per day, full timeline depth, and search.
If you are setting up an assistant connector, sign in instead: a keyless connector cannot be upgraded later without removing it and adding it again.
Check it works, no key:
curl -s https://mcp.clstr.news/mcp -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/call",
"params":{"name":"get_top_situations","arguments":{"window":"24h","limit":3}}}'
Structured output
Every tool declares an outputSchema and returns structuredContent next to its markdown, on protocol revision 2025-06-18. That payload is the same object the REST equivalent publishes, with clstr.news links carrying ?ref=mcp, and each search_situations row also names the situation it belongs to (id, title, slug, cluster_count), which GET /search rows do not. A client can read fields instead of parsing text; the markdown still comes back for clients that do not read structured results.
Frameworks, CLIs and mcpServers configs: API key
Anything that keeps its servers in a config file, and any client with no OAuth flow of its own, authenticates with a Bearer header. Create a free key in Settings (sign in first, no card needed).
"clstr": {
"url": "https://mcp.clstr.news/mcp",
"headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer clstr_YOUR_KEY" }
}
stdio-only client? Bridge with npx mcp-remote https://mcp.clstr.news/mcp --header "Authorization: Bearer clstr_YOUR_KEY", which is the same key, not a sign-in.
What to expect
- Same key, same caps as the REST API: one tool call counts as one request. Caps are hard limits with no overage charges; the tiers are on pricing.
- Situations update as new coverage is clustered. It is built for the shape of a developing situation, not for a stream of individual articles.
- It reports what sources say. CLSTR does not check whether they are right.
search_situationsreaches back at most 30 days.
Choosing between news sources for an agent? Read News API for AI agents. To see what the pipeline reads, open the observatory.