Newsline

What the Newsline MCP server does

The Newsline MCP server exposes a public news aggregation service through Model Context Protocol. It collects 16 feeds from 14 newsrooms, assigns each source a rough bias score from -2 to +2, and presents results as either a flat list of headlines or clusters representing the same story across outlets.

The service is designed for agents that need more than a single publication's view. It can identify stories covered by only one political side, show how different sides headline the same subject, and report whether the underlying feeds responded successfully. The source list includes general-interest, political, and technology publications.

How it works

Newsline runs as a Cloudflare Worker. The worker polls configured RSS 2.0 or Atom feeds, parses their entries, and keeps a pooled feed result for reuse across the reader, REST API, and MCP endpoint. Feed data is refreshed no more than once every two minutes.

Story mode groups headlines using title-keyword overlap. A cluster is marked as a blindspot when coverage comes from only one political side, counting multiple feeds from the same newsroom as one voice. Filtering is applied per request, with options such as outlet, bias, search text, developing status, and result limit.

The MCP endpoint uses stateless streamable HTTP and does not require authentication. The documented connection command is:

claude mcp add --transport http sidewise https://sidewise.heyitsmejosh.com/mcp

Setup and configuration

No local installation, account, API key, or environment variable is required to use the hosted endpoint. Connect an MCP client to the public URL, then call the available tools. The service is described as compatible with any MCP client, including Claude Desktop, Claude Code, and Cursor.

For developers deploying the project themselves, the repository uses Cloudflare Workers and Static Assets. Feed definitions are maintained in worker.js; a source can be added with its outlet name, bias score, and RSS or Atom URL. npm run deploy publishes the worker, while npm test runs the local test suite without network access.

Tools and capabilities

The Newsline MCP server provides four tools:

• get_news returns current headlines. Parameters can select a flat or clustered view, outlet, bias, developing stories, search text, and result limit.
• get_blindspots returns stories covered by only one political side.
• compare_coverage takes a required search query and returns side-by-side headline coverage plus words unique to each side.
• get_feed_health reports which feeds answered and whether the result is complete or a stale fallback.

The related REST API also supports source listing, health checks, filtering, and optional comparison data, but those endpoints are separate from the MCP tool interface.

Limitations and notes

Bias labels are manually assigned rough leans, not objective ratings. Results depend on the freshness and availability of the configured feeds. An empty or one-sided response can result from an outage, so call get_feed_health before treating it as a meaningful news signal.

Story clustering is based on headline wording and can occasionally group an unrelated item. Feed entries without a date receive a timestamp of zero and sort to the bottom. The service links to publisher content rather than storing full articles, and responses are not cached per query.