How to add live news search to Claude with an MCP connector

Claude's knowledge stops at its training cutoff, so on its own it can't tell you what happened this morning. To give it current news, add a news search MCP server as a connector. In Claude, that means Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector with the URL https://nearwire.dev/mcp, then signing in. In Claude Code, it's one command: claude mcp add --transport http nearwire https://nearwire.dev/mcp. After that, Claude can search recent articles by meaning and link to every source it uses.

This guide covers both clients, the prompts that work well, and the limits to know about.

What you need

A Claude plan that supports custom connectors (see Anthropic's custom connector docs for current plan availability), or Claude Code.
A Nearwire account. The free plan includes 500 searches a month, and you can create the account during the sign-in step below.

You don't need an API key. Nearwire's MCP server supports OAuth sign-in, so Claude registers itself and asks you to approve access.

Add the connector in Claude (web and desktop)

Open Settings → Connectors and choose Add custom connector. On Team and Enterprise plans, an owner adds it under Admin settings → Connectors first, and then each member connects from their own settings.
Name it Nearwire and enter the server URL:
```
https://nearwire.dev/mcp
```
Leave the OAuth client ID and secret fields empty. Claude registers itself as a client automatically.
Click Add, then Connect. A Nearwire window opens. Sign in or create an account, review the requested permissions, and approve. Read-only search access is requested by default, and you can untick anything you don't want to share.
Back in Claude, open a new chat and check that the Nearwire tools are enabled in the tools menu.

The connector you add on the web also appears in the Claude desktop app, because connectors belong to your account rather than to the device.

Add it in Claude Code

Run this in a terminal:

claude mcp add --transport http nearwire https://nearwire.dev/mcp

Then start Claude Code, run /mcp, select nearwire, and choose Authenticate. Your browser opens the same sign-in and approval screen. Claude Code stores and refreshes the token for you.

To share the server with your team through the repository, add --scope project. This writes the server to .mcp.json. Each person still signs in with their own account.

Using an API key instead

OAuth is easiest for interactive use. For CI jobs or shared machines where nobody can click through a browser, create a key in Dashboard → API keys and pass it as a header:

claude mcp add --transport http nearwire https://nearwire.dev/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $NEARWIRE_API_KEY"

New keys default to search-only access and expire after 30 days. For other clients (Cursor, VS Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Windsurf), the MCP config generator writes the right config file for you.

What Claude can do with it

The connector gives Claude five tools:

Tool	What it does	Uses quota
`search_news`	Finds articles by meaning, keywords, or both (`semantic`, `keyword`, `hybrid`), filtered by time range and source	1 search
`related_stories`	Given an article from a search, finds other coverage of the same story	1 search
`list_feeds`	Lists the sources that are indexed	No
`get_usage`	Shows searches used this month	No
`monitoring_inbox`	Reads matches from your saved queries (needs the monitoring permission)	No

Time ranges accept plain language such as 24h, 7d or yesterday, so Claude doesn't need to work out dates.

Prompts that work well

Be explicit about the time window and ask for citations. Claude follows those instructions closely when it has a tool that returns URLs.

Find news about renewable energy policy from the last 24 hours. Summarize the five most relevant stories and cite each original URL.

List the available news sources, then find coverage of central bank interest rate decisions from the past week. Group the stories by country.

Search for the latest on semiconductor export restrictions. For the most relevant result, find related coverage and tell me where the sources disagree.

For a quick check that everything works, ask: "Use Nearwire to check my remaining search quota." That calls get_usage, which doesn't consume any searches.

Pitfalls

Claude answers from memory instead of searching. Name the tool or the source: "Search Nearwire for…". Starting a new chat after adding the connector also helps.
Weak matches get padded into the answer. Semantic search always returns its closest matches, even when nothing is truly relevant. Ask Claude to ignore weak results, or have it pass a minScore (around 0.3 is a reasonable starting point for short queries). See the MCP docs for how scores work.
Exact names get fuzzy results. For company names, tickers or specific bills, ask for hybrid mode, which combines keyword and semantic ranking.
"Unauthorized" after it worked before. You may have disconnected the app in Nearwire's dashboard, or the session expired. Reconnect from Claude's connector settings, or run /mcp → Authenticate again in Claude Code.

When not to use Nearwire

Nearwire indexes a curated set of English-language news feeds, and the index begins in October 2026. Ask Claude to run list_feeds to see exactly what's covered. If you need broad web search, non-English sources, paywalled articles or historical archives, a general web search tool will serve you better. Nearwire fits when you want recent news with reliable timestamps, source filters and citable links, and the same index available to your own code through the REST API.

Next step

Connect your agent, or try the setup in Claude Code with the command above. The MCP server docs list every tool argument, rate limit and error code.