German Newsfeed MCP Server

Disclaimer: This is a private, unofficial project. It is not an ARD product and is neither operated nor endorsed by ARD, ARD-aktuell, or NDR. It is developed independently of the author's professional employment. "ARD" and "tagesschau" are trademarks of their respective owners and are named here solely to describe the API being accessed.

This project merely connects the public API to an MCP-capable AI assistant. ARD-aktuell is responsible for the API itself, its operation, and its content; this project cannot provide information on any of those. Please raise any concerns about this project, in particular from rights holders, as a GitHub issue. Substantiated concerns will be addressed promptly.

In thirty seconds

This Model Context Protocol (MCP) server connects your AI assistant (Claude Desktop and others) to the public news API of tagesschau.de: current headlines, category and regional news, and full-text search, locally via stdio, no API key required.

Example: asked "Was sind die aktuellen Schlagzeilen?", the assistant answers with the current top stories from tagesschau.de, each with title, date, summary, and a link to the article.

Language:

• 🇩🇪 Deutsch
• 🇬🇧 English

What is this?

This MCP server connects the public news API of tagesschau.de to your AI assistant (Claude, Open Claw, etc.).

Once connected, your AI can answer questions like:

• "Was sind die aktuellen Schlagzeilen?"
• "Zeig mir die neuesten Wirtschaftsnachrichten."
• "Suche nach Artikeln über Ukraine."
• "Welche Regionalnachrichten gibt es aus Bayern?"

For details on the API and its terms, see Data Source and Terms of Use. No API key required.

Data Source and Terms of Use

This server calls the publicly accessible endpoint www.tagesschau.de/api2u/, operated by ARD-aktuell. The delivered content originates from the ARD broadcasters, remains subject to their rights and to the terms of use of tagesschau.de: https://www.tagesschau.de/nutzungsbedingungen/

The API is not officially documented. Community documentation is available at bund.dev (https://tagesschau.api.bund.dev). bund.dev is a civil-society documentation project, neither the operator of the API nor a rights holder of the content. Its documentation served as a reference for this project but does not grant any usage rights.

Applicable limits: at most 60 requests per hour, and no republication of the content except for offerings under a CC licence (https://tagesschau.de/creativecommons). Compliance is the responsibility of whoever operates a given instance.

The robots.txt of tagesschau.de additionally declares an express reservation of rights under Section 44b(3) of the German Copyright Act (as of 2026-05-19): text and data mining and the automated use of the content for training or fine-tuning AI models are prohibited without written consent. Expressly exempt is automated access for the sole purpose of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) or grounding, provided the technical directives of the robots.txt are complied with and the content remains attributed to its original source. This server falls under that exemption: it passes content to the assistant exclusively together with source links. The retrieved content must not be used to train AI models.

Features

Project Structure

german-newsfeed-mcp/
├── src/
│   └── german_newsfeed_mcp/
│       ├── __init__.py      # Package metadata
│       ├── config.py        # Environment-driven configuration
│       ├── client.py        # Async HTTP client (httpx) + error handling
│       ├── rate_limiter.py  # Token-bucket rate limiter
│       ├── validators.py    # Domain constants + validation helpers
│       ├── formatters.py    # Markdown rendering of news items & channels
│       ├── tools.py         # MCP tool business logic
│       ├── resources.py     # MCP resource business logic
│       └── server.py        # Composition root: FastMCP + run() entry-point
├── tests/
│   ├── conftest.py          # Shared fixtures & mock payloads
│   ├── test_client.py       # Client unit + live integration tests
│   ├── test_rate_limiter.py # Rate-limiter unit tests
│   ├── test_validators.py   # Validator unit tests (URL & ressort checks)
│   ├── test_formatters.py   # Formatter unit tests (pure functions)
│   ├── test_tools.py        # Tool unit + live integration tests
│   └── test_resources.py    # Resource unit + live integration tests
├── main.py                  # Thin entry-point (calls server.run())
├── pyproject.toml           # Project metadata, deps, pytest & pylint config
├── uv.lock                  # Locked dependency graph (commit this!)
├── Dockerfile               # Multi-stage production image
├── docker-compose.yml       # One-command remote deployment
├── .env.example             # Configuration template
├── Makefile                 # Developer shortcuts (test, lint, docker, clean)
├── CHANGELOG.md             # Version history
├── CONTRIBUTING.md          # How to contribute
└── README_de.md             # German version of this file

Quick Start Local (Claude Desktop)

Also applicable to other AI assistants, edit their respective config instead. This mode uses stdio transport; the server is launched as a child process. No port is needed.

Prerequisites

• macOS / Linux / Windows (WSL2)
• Python 3.12+
• uv: curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
• Claude Desktop

Step 1: Clone and install

git clone https://github.com/Jakolo121/german-newsfeed-mcp.git
cd german-newsfeed-mcp
uv sync

Step 2: Verify it works

uv run python -c "from german_newsfeed_mcp.server import mcp; print('OK!', mcp.name)"
# Expected: OK! German Newsfeed MCP

Step 3: Connect Claude Desktop

Open your Claude Desktop config file:

Add the following entry (adjust the path to your clone):

    "german-newsfeed": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": [
        "--directory",
        "/absolute/path/to/german-newsfeed-mcp",
        "run",
        "german-newsfeed-mcp"
      ]
    },

Step 4: Restart Claude Desktop

Quit and reopen the application, or reload its MCP servers, depending on the application.

Step 5: Try it!

Ask your assistant:

"Was sind die aktuellen Nachrichten?"

Remote / Docker Deployment

Self-hosting for your own or team-internal use. The recommended default is stdio (see Quick Start); the streamable-http transport is an option you choose deliberately.

Security note: The HTTP transport has no authentication. Do not expose it publicly without an authentication layer in front (e.g. a reverse proxy). The Compose setup therefore deliberately binds the port to 127.0.0.1 only. Whoever makes an instance reachable for third parties becomes the responsible operator under the terms of use.