cre-fred-mcp

An MCP server that pulls live Federal Reserve economic data (FRED) — the rates a CRE capital-markets routine runs on: SOFR, Treasury yields, the Fed funds rate, mortgage rates, CPI and PCE. Instead of re-scraping by hand, your MCP client pulls the current numbers on every run.

Quickstart — let Claude set it up for you

Not technical? You don't need to be. Hand this repo to Claude and let it do the work:

1. Open Claude Desktop (or Claude Code).
2. Give it this repo — paste the URL https://github.com/nik-mirando/cre-fred-mcp (or this README) and say: "Help me install this MCP server in my Claude Desktop, step by step."
3. Claude walks you through the three things it needs:
   • a free FRED API key (~2 minutes, instant, no credit card — see below),
   • installing the server,
   • adding it to your Claude config and restarting.

Once it's connected, just ask the questions further down and Claude pulls the live numbers itself.

The one step Claude can't do for you is create the free FRED account — it'll hand you the link and tell you exactly where to paste the key. Everything else it handles.

Example questions to ask once it's connected

• "Give me a CRE capital markets snapshot."
• "What's SOFR today, and the 10-year Treasury?"
• "What's the current 30-year mortgage rate, and how has it moved this year?"
• "What's CPI and PCE inflation right now, year over year?"
• "Pull the Fed funds rate and the 2s/10s Treasury spread."

Tools

Tool	What it returns
get_capital_markets_snapshot	One call: SOFR, UST 2/5/10/30yr, Fed funds, 30yr mortgage (latest %), plus CPI & PCE year-over-year %
get_latest_value(series_id)	Most recent non-missing observation for any series
get_series_observations(series_id, ...)	Time series with date/value (supports units like pc1 = YoY %, and frequency aggregation)
get_series_metadata(series_id)	Title, units, frequency, last updated
search_series(query)	Find series by free-text
list_common_series	Curated CRE-relevant series ids

Missing values (FRED's ".", common on daily series over holidays) are normalised to null, never crash, and are skipped by get_latest_value.

Get a free API key

FRED keys are free and issued instantly:

1. Create / sign in to a FRED account.
2. Go to https://fredaccount.stlouisfed.org/apikeys and request a key.
3. Copy the 32-character key.

Install

# from source (this folder)
pip install .
# or run without installing, via uv
uvx --from . cre-fred-mcp

Set the key (either export it or drop a .env next to the server):

cp .env.example .env   # then paste your key

MCP client config

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "cre-fred": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["--from", "/abs/path/to/cre-fred-mcp", "cre-fred-mcp"],
      "env": { "FRED_API_KEY": "your_key_here" }
    }
  }
}

(Or "command": "python", "args": ["-m", "cre_fred_mcp"] with the package installed.)

Verify it works (live)

python smoke_test.py

Makes real calls and asserts on real values — e.g. that DGS10 metadata titles the 10-Year Treasury and that the latest SOFR print is a sane numeric rate.

Data source

Data: FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. This is an unofficial client and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Fed. Series are subject to FRED's terms of use.