Gizmo3030/news_mcp_server

News MCP Server

An MCP server that helps you:

• Search the latest news (Google News RSS)
• Fetch and extract article content
• Discuss articles with an AI via your choice of LLM provider: OpenAI, Gemini, or a local Ollama

Designed to work with Open WebUI as the front-end MCP client.

Features

• Tools:
  • search_news(query, max_results?, lang?, country?)
  • get_article(url)
  • discuss(messages[], provider?, model?)
• Provider selection via env or CLI: openai, gemini, ollama

Setup

Requires Python 3.10–3.12.

1. Install with Poetry (recommended)

   • Ensure Poetry is installed
   • From repo root:
     • poetry install
     • cp .env.example .env and fill in keys

2. Or with pip/uv

   • python -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
   • pip install -e .
   • Copy .env.example to .env

Environment variables:

• LLM_PROVIDER: openai | gemini | ollama
• LLM_MODEL: optional default model name
• OPENAI_API_KEY, GEMINI_API_KEY as needed
• OLLAMA_BASE_URL (default http://localhost:11434). Example: http://ollama.gizmosdomain.com

Run

This is an MCP server speaking over stdio.

• With Poetry: poetry run news-mcp-server
• With pip: python -m news_mcp_server.server

Optional flags:

• --provider openai|gemini|ollama
• --model <model-name>
• --ollama-url <http(s)://host:port>

Run via mcpo (OpenAPI proxy)

Expose this MCP server as an OpenAPI HTTP service using mcpo.

• Quick (no install) using uv:

uvx mcpo --port 8000 --api-key "top-secret" -- news-mcp-server \
	--provider ollama --model llama3.1:8b

• Or install and run with pip:

pip install mcpo
mcpo --port 8000 --api-key "top-secret" -- news-mcp-server \
	--provider openai --model gpt-4o-mini

• Using this repo's Poetry environment:

poetry run python -m pip install mcpo
poetry run mcpo --port 8000 --api-key "top-secret" -- \
	poetry run news-mcp-server --provider ollama --model llama3.1:8b

Then open http://localhost:8000/docs for auto-generated Swagger UI, or point any OpenAPI-compatible client to http://localhost:8000 with the provided API key.

Notes:

• The server still loads your .env (LLM_PROVIDER, LLM_MODEL, keys) as usual; flags override env when provided.
• Omit --api-key for local/dev if you don't need auth. See mcpo docs for more options.

Open WebUI integration

In Open WebUI, add an MCP server configuration pointing to this binary.

Example (systemd/env) command:

news-mcp-server --provider ollama --model llama3.1:8b --ollama-url http://ollama.gizmosdomain.com

Open WebUI should detect tools:

• search_news
• get_article
• discuss

Usage tips:

• First call search_news with your topic.
• Then get_article on a chosen URL.
• Finally use discuss passing messages like: [{"role":"system","content":"You are a helpful analyst."},{"role":"user","content":"Summarize this article: ..."}]

Notes

• News search uses Google News RSS. Results depend on region/language.
• Article extraction uses Trafilatura; some sites may block scraping or require JS.
• Respect website terms and robots.txt when fetching content.

License

MIT