We Just Launched a Free Live News Feed for AI Assistants — Here's How to Connect Yours

I have been using AI assistants in my daily work for a while now, and there is one thing that drives me a little crazy — they always seem to be living in the past. You ask a question, get a brilliant answer, and then realize it is based on information from six months ago, or a year ago, or sometimes even longer. For general knowledge, that is fine. But when you are trying to stay on top of current events, it breaks the whole experience.

So we built something to fix it. Today, ICT Innovations is launching a free, publicly accessible MCP news server at news.ictinnovations.com. Connect any compatible AI assistant to it, and suddenly it knows what happened this morning. No API key. No account. No cost.

The endpoint is simply: https://news.ictinnovations.com/mcp

What Is MCP, and Why Does It Matter?

MCP — the Model Context Protocol — is an open standard that Anthropic introduced to let AI assistants talk to external tools and data sources. Think of it as a plugin system, but built into the protocol level. Instead of each AI tool inventing its own way to call external APIs, MCP provides a universal interface that any compatible model can use.

The adoption has been fast. Claude Desktop, Claude.ai, Cursor, Windsurf, Zed, Continue.dev, Cline, LibreChat, and OpenWebUI all support MCP today. If you use any of these, you are two minutes away from giving your AI live news access.

Once it is connected, you can simply ask: "What are the top headlines right now?" or "Any breaking news from Pakistan this morning?" and get real, sourced answers — not guesses.

What the Server Actually Does

The news.ictinnovations.com server pulls from a curated set of sources that refresh continuously throughout the day — BBC, Reuters, AP News, Al Jazeera, TechCrunch, Dawn, Geo News, and more. Everything is stored locally in a database, ranked by recency and source credibility, and exposed through six clean tools your AI can call:

get_latest_newsTop headlines, filterable by keyword, source, category, or time window. The one you will use most.

get_breaking_newsOnly articles from the last two hours — for when something is happening right now.

get_pakistan_newsA dedicated feed from Dawn and Geo — because we are a Pakistani company and this matters to us.

search_newsFull-text keyword search across everything stored. Ask about a specific topic, person, or event.

refresh_newsTrigger an immediate fetch from all sources if you want the very latest right now.

news_statsQuick summary: how many articles are stored, where they came from, when the last fetch ran.

How to Connect — Every Major AI Tool

The URL is the same for every tool below: https://news.ictinnovations.com/mcp. The server uses the Streamable HTTP transport from MCP spec 2025-03-26 — the current standard.

Claude Desktop

Open or create ~/.claude/claude_desktop_config.json and add the following. Restart Claude after saving.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "news": {
      "command": "python3",
      "args": ["-m", "mcp_proxy", "https://news.ictinnovations.com/mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Claude.ai (Web)

Go to Settings → Integrations (sometimes labeled Connectors). Add a new MCP server and paste the URL. Claude will discover and list the available tools automatically.

https://news.ictinnovations.com/mcp

Cursor

Open Settings → MCP and click "Add MCP Server". Choose HTTP as the transport and paste the URL. Restart Cursor — the news tools appear in the AI panel.

https://news.ictinnovations.com/mcp

Windsurf

Navigate to Settings → MCP Servers → Add Server. Set the type to HTTP/SSE and enter the URL. After saving, Windsurf's Cascade AI will have live news access.

https://news.ictinnovations.com/mcp

Zed Editor

Edit ~/.config/zed/settings.json and add the context_servers block:

{
  "context_servers": {
    "news-mcp": {
      "url": "https://news.ictinnovations.com/mcp",
      "settings": {}
    }
  }
}

Continue.dev

In your Continue config at ~/.continue/config.json, add to the mcpServers array:

{
  "mcpServers": [
    {
      "name": "ICT News",
      "transport": {
        "type": "streamable-http",
        "url": "https://news.ictinnovations.com/mcp"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Cline (VS Code)

Open the Cline sidebar, go to the MCP Servers tab, and click "Add Server". Paste the URL — Cline handles the rest.

https://news.ictinnovations.com/mcp

LibreChat

In your admin panel: Admin → MCP Servers → Add. All users on your instance will then have access to the news tools.

Name: ICT News
URL:  https://news.ictinnovations.com/mcp
Type: Streamable HTTP

OpenWebUI

Go to Settings → Tools → Add Tool Server and set the type to MCP:

Server URL: https://news.ictinnovations.com/mcp

Why We Made This Free

Honestly, we built this for ourselves first. We use AI assistants heavily across our teams at ICT Innovations, and the knowledge cutoff problem kept coming up. So we solved it — and then figured there was no reason to keep it to ourselves.

The MCP ecosystem is stronger when there are more high-quality, freely accessible servers in it. This is our small contribution to that. We plan to expand the news sources over time and keep it free.

If you have source suggestions or run into any issues, reach out at support@ictinnovations.com — we would genuinely like to hear from you.

Go try it. Open your AI tool, add the URL, and ask for today's headlines. It takes about two minutes, and I think you will appreciate having it.