News MCP Server for VnExpress

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that enables AI agents (like Claude) to directly interact with VnExpress, Vietnam's most-read electronic newspaper. This server enables searching for news detailedly, reading latest updates via RSS, and parsing full article content in clean text format.

Features

• Get Latest News: Fetch real-time headlines from specific categories (World, Business, Sports, etc.) using RSS feeds.

• Search & Explore: deeply search for articles with advanced filters (keywords, time range, media type, categories).

• Read Content: Extract clean, readable text from any VnExpress article URL, removing ads, scripts, and clutter for optimal AI processing.

Installation & Usage

You can use this server directly without installing it manually by using npx.

1. Prerequisites

• Node.js installed on your machine.

2. Configuration for Claude Desktop

Add the following configuration to your Claude Desktop config file (usually located at %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json on Windows or ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json on macOS):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "news-mcp-server": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "news-mcp-server-vnexpress",
        "--stdio"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop, and the tools will be available.

Available Tools

1. news-latest

Fetches the latest news headlines from RSS feeds.

• Inputs:

  • category (string, optional): The category to fetch. Default: tin-moi-nhat (Latest News).

    • Options: the-gioi, thoi-su, kinh-doanh, giai-tri, the-thao, phap-luat, gia-duc, suc-khoe, doi-song, du-lich, khoa-hoc-cong-nghe, xe, y-kien, tam-su, cuoi.

• Output: Raw XML content from the RSS feed containing titles, links, pubDates, and summaries.

2. news-explorer

Search and filter for specific articles.

• Inputs:

  • search_q (string, required): Keywords to search for.

  • cate_code (enum, optional): Filter by category code (e.g., the-gioi, kinhdoanh). Default: all.

  • media_type (enum, optional): Filter by content type (text, image, video, infographic). Default: all.

  • date_format (enum, optional): Time range (day, week, month, year). Default: all.

  • page (number, optional): Page number for pagination.

• Output: A YAML-formatted list of articles including title, link, description, and comment count.

3. news_reader

Reads the full content of a specific article.

• Inputs:

  • url (string, required): The full URL of the VnExpress article.

• Output: Clean, plain text content of the article body. HTML tags, styles, and scripts are stripped out using Cheerio to ensure the AI receives only high-quality token-efficient text.

Technical Details

• Framework: Built using the official @modelcontextprotocol/sdk.

• RSS Parsing: news-latest connects directly to VnExpress RSS endpoints (https://vnexpress.net/rss/*).

• Web Scraping: news-explorer constructs search queries against timkiem.vnexpress.net and parses the HTML results using regex and DOM manipulation.

• Content Extraction: news_reader fetches the article HTML and uses Cheerio to locate the <section class="page-detail">, stripping unnecessary DOM elements (script, style, iframe) to return pure content.

Development

If you want to modify or build this project locally:

1. Clone the repository.

2. Install dependencies:

   npm install

3. Build the project:

   npm run build

4. Test locally using the MCP Inspector:

   npm run inspect

License

MIT