citewire

An attribution-first MCP server for free news sources and free article APIs.

Why it exists

Agents need to read news and research metadata, but the publishers who create that work keep the rights and the traffic. citewire reads the metadata and links straight back to the original article, so an agent can list, search, and cite a story without the content ever being copied, stored, or republished. The name is the whole idea: cite plus wire.

Related MCP server: Academic Paper MCP HTTP/SSE Server

What it does

citewire has two jobs.

1. Serve a news platform. Any site that exposes a compatible read API (list, detail, topics) becomes a set of typed MCP tools (news.list, news.get, news.topics, news.about) by declaring one small JSON block. The tools are a mechanical projection of the HTTP surface, so they cannot drift from the API they wrap. See docs/platform-contract.md.

2. Query free article APIs. Ten open news and research APIs are available as pass-through tools. Nothing is stored and nothing is republished; each tool returns metadata and links to the original. Every provider is disabled by default. Enabling one is your deliberate act, and reviewing that provider's terms for your use is your responsibility. See docs/providers.md.

Quick start

Run over stdio (the default transport, and how MCP clients launch the server):

npx citewire --config citewire.config.json

Wire it into Claude Desktop (claude_desktop_config.json) or Claude Code (.mcp.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "citewire": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["citewire", "--config", "citewire.config.json"]
    }
  }
}

Use an absolute path for --config if the client does not launch from your project directory.

Serve over Streamable HTTP instead of stdio (default port 8722, JSON-RPC over POST /):

npx citewire --config citewire.config.json --http 8722

Configuration

A deployment is described entirely by a small JSON file: an optional platform to wrap, and the providers you choose to enable. This example wraps the Karaya Group Industry News platform and enables one provider, OpenAlex:

{
  "platform": {
    "name": "Karaya Group Industry News",
    "siteUrl": "https://karaya.group",
    "apiBase": "https://karaya.group/api/v1/news"
  },
  "providers": {
    "openalex": { "enabled": true }
  }
}

Omit the platform block to run providers only. Omit providers, or leave a provider out of it, and that provider stays disabled. A bad config fails loudly at startup with an error that names the offending field.

Platform tools

These four tools exist only when a platform block is configured.

Providers

Ten free APIs. None requires an API key. Every one ships disabled. Provider tools are namespaced under a short prefix; the authoritative list for a given deployment is whatever the running server advertises through tools/list. Full detail, endpoints, and free-access terms are in docs/providers.md.

Design

• Zero runtime dependencies. ESM, Node >= 18. Nothing to audit but the source in this repo.

• Hand-written JSON-RPC. The MCP core is a small dispatcher, not a wrapped SDK.

• Stateless. No sessions and no stored state. Each request is handled on its own.

• Transport-agnostic core. createCitewire(config) builds one server; stdio and Streamable HTTP both pump messages through it. The HTTP handler is plain Node and also mounts inside a serverless function.

• Storage is out of scope. citewire never stores or republishes content. It reads metadata and links to the original. That boundary is the point of the project, not a limitation of it.

Deployments

Karaya Group's Industry News platform (karaya.group/industry-news) is the first production deployment. It serves citewire at https://karaya.group/mcp.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. Tests run with npm test (node --test, no install required).

License

MIT. See LICENSE.