External MCP · macro data

OpenEcon Data MCP setup

Natural-language access to 330k+ indicators from FRED, World Bank, IMF, Eurostat, and more. Upstream: hanlulong/openecon-data / openecon.ai. Prefer the MCP for interactive agent queries; use the api-data-fetcher skill for reproducible project scripts with pinned series IDs.

Why this MCP?

Stops agents from inventing stale GDP/CPI numbers
One endpoint for many official sources
Hosted SSE — no local API keys for the default setup

Hosted MCP (simplest)

Endpoint: https://data.openecon.ai/mcp (SSE transport). First queries may work without an account; create a free OpenEcon account if rate-limited.

Cursor

Add an MCP server entry pointing at the SSE endpoint:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "openecon-data": {
      "url": "https://data.openecon.ai/mcp",
      "transport": "sse"
    }
  }
}

Reload MCP servers in Cursor after saving ~/.cursor/mcp.json.

Claude Code & Codex

claude mcp add --transport sse openecon-data https://data.openecon.ai/mcp --scope user

codex mcp add openecon-data --url https://data.openecon.ai/mcp

Verify

Ask: “US unemployment rate monthly since 2015 from FRED — return the series id and last observation date.” Confirm against fred.stlouisfed.org.

FRED-only alternative

If you only need FRED and want a local API-key server, see install/external-mcps.md (stefanoamorelli/fred-mcp-server). For multi-source macro work, OpenEcon is the better default.

Self-host OpenEcon with upstream ./scripts/setup.sh only if you need air-gapped or custom keys.