Mercury402: Treasury/FRED financial data over x402

Mercury402 MCP Server

An MCP server that lets Claude and other MCP clients discover and call Mercury402's pay-per-call financial data API: Treasury yields, FRED series, forex, yield spreads, breakeven inflation, macro bundles, composites and AI briefings.

Mercury402 is paid per call with x402: an unpaid request returns HTTP 402 with a payment descriptor; the client pays USDC on Base and gets JSON back.

• Default (free) mode: browse all endpoints and prices; calling an endpoint returns the price and payment instructions from the 402. No wallet, no spending.
• Paid mode (opt-in): set MERCURY402_PAYER_PRIVATE_KEY and the server pays the 402 (USDC on Base, capped per call) and returns the data.

Tools

get_endpoint_data arguments

Only paths in the catalog can be called; anything else is rejected before a request is made.

Install

Requires Node.js 20.10+. The package is mercury402-mcp on npm; MCP clients can launch it with npx, so there is nothing to install by hand.

npx -y mercury402-mcp        # starts the server on stdio (what MCP clients do for you)

Claude Code

claude mcp add mercury402 -- npx -y mercury402-mcp

Claude Desktop

Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS) or %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json (Windows), then restart Claude Desktop:

{

"mcpServers": { "mercury402": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "mercury402-mcp"] } } }

Paid mode (optional)

By default the server never spends money: it lists endpoints and returns price quotes. To have it pay per call, give it a payer wallet:

Warning: the private key is stored in plaintext in your MCP client config

(claude_desktop_config.json, or ~/.claude.json for Claude Code). Use a **dedicated wallet holding only

a small USDC balance on Base**, never your main wallet, and keep MERCURY402_MAX_PRICE_USD low. With

Claude Code, don't add the key with --scope project: that writes it to .mcp.json, which is usually

committed to git.

Claude Code:

claude mcp add mercury402 \

-e MERCURY402_PAYER_PRIVATE_KEY= \ -e MERCURY402_MAX_PRICE_USD=0.50 \ -- npx -y mercury402-mcp

Claude Desktop:

{

"mcpServers": { "mercury402": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "mercury402-mcp"], "env": { "MERCURY402_PAYER_PRIVATE_KEY": " ", "MERCURY402_MAX_PRICE_USD": "0.50" } } } }

Alternative: run from a local checkout

git clone https://github.com/dudman1/mercury402.git

cd mercury402/mcp-server npm install npm run build

Then point your client at the built file instead of npx:

claude mcp add mercury402 -- node /absolute/path/to/mercury402/mcp-server/dist/index.js

{

"mcpServers": { "mercury402": { "command": "node", "args": ["/absolute/path/to/mercury402/mcp-server/dist/index.js"] } } }

Streamable HTTP (optional)

npx -y mercury402-mcp --http   # http://127.0.0.1:3402/mcp (stateless, JSON responses)

Stateless streamable HTTP: POST /mcp speaks MCP, GET / describes the server, and GET /healthz is a local health check. The HTTP endpoint has no authentication. It binds to 127.0.0.1 by default, checks the Host header against an allowlist (loopback names plus MCP_HTTP_ALLOWED_HOSTS), rate-limits per client IP and globally, and caps request bodies.

Paid mode over HTTP is loopback-only. The server refuses to start with MERCURY402_PAYER_PRIVATE_KEY set together with a non-loopback MCP_HTTP_HOST, a public MCP_HTTP_ALLOWED_HOSTS entry, MCP_HTTP_TRUST_PROXY, or MCP_PUBLIC_URL. In paid mode it also rejects browser requests (any Origin header). To serve it publicly behind a reverse proxy in free mode, see deploy/HOSTED.md.

Environment variables

Example tool calls

List the Treasury endpoints:

{ "name": "list_endpoints", "arguments": { "category": "treasury" } }

Categories: ai, breakeven-inflation, composite, forex, fred, macro, treasury, yield-spread.

Get a FRED series (free mode returns a quote):

{ "name": "get_endpoint_data", "arguments": { "path": "/v1/fred/UNRATE", "params": { "limit": 12 } } }

PAYMENT REQUIRED (HTTP 402) for https://api.mercury402.com/v1/fred/UNRATE?limit=12: $0.05 (50000 USDC atomic units on base, pay to 0x…). Payment required. Paid mode is disabled (MERCURY402_PAYER_PRIVATE_KEY not set).

{ "status": "payment_required", "quote": { "price_usd": 0.05, "amount_usdc_atomic": "50000", "network": "base", "asset": "0x833589fCD6eDb6E08f4c7C32D4f71b54bdA02913", "pay_to": "0x…", "scheme": "exact", "x402_version": 1 }, "how_to_pay": ["…"], ... }

Historical yield curve (POST, params become the JSON body):

{

"name": "get_endpoint_data", "arguments": { "path": "/v1/treasury/yield-curve/historical", "params": { "start_date": "2026-07-01", "end_date": "2026-09-30" } } }

Ask the data (AI, POST):

{

"name": "get_endpoint_data", "arguments": { "path": "/v1/ai/ask", "params": { "question": "Is inflation cooling?", "series": ["/v1/fred/cpi", "/v1/fred/pce-core"] } } }

Quote only, even in paid mode:

{ "name": "get_endpoint_data", "arguments": { "path": "/v1/composite/economic-dashboard", "pay": false } }

In paid mode a successful call returns status: "ok", the endpoint's JSON under data, and a payment block with the price, payer address and decoded PAYMENT-RESPONSE settlement (transaction hash).

How paid mode works

1. Request the endpoint; Mercury402 answers 402 with x402 payment requirements. The v1 JSON body (x402Version: 1, network base) is used; the v2 Payment-Required header is a fallback.
2. The server picks the exact / USDC-on-Base option and checks it: network base (or eip155:8453), asset = Base USDC (0x8335…2913), price ≤ MERCURY402_MAX_PRICE_USD. Otherwise it returns the quote and does not pay.
3. It signs an EIP-3009 transferWithAuthorization for exactly the quoted amount (locally, with a fresh random nonce) and resends the request with a PAYMENT-SIGNATURE header containing base64 JSON { x402Version: 2, accepted: , payload: { authorization, signature } }, the same shape that Mercury402's server verifies (require402Payment()). Mercury402 settles on-chain and returns the data.
4. Paid requests are never retried automatically, so one tool call can't be charged twice.

Security notes: use a dedicated hot wallet with a small balance, because the key sits in plaintext in your client config. The server only reads it from the environment, uses it in-process for signing, and never logs, echoes, or includes it in tool output or errors.

Pricing notes

• Most endpoints are $0.05; macro bundle/recession probability $0.10; AI briefing $0.10, AI ask $0.15; composites $0.40–$0.50.
• /v1/fred/{series_id} costs 2× when both observation_start and observation_end are supplied.
• Invalid FRED series ids and malformed historical date ranges get a free 400 before any 402.

Development

From a checkout of dudman1/mercury402:

npm test                    # vitest; HTTP and payments are mocked, no network, no real transactions

test/server-contract.test.ts also boots ../src/server.js (needs npm ci at the

repo root; skipped otherwise) with on-chain settlement stubbed

npm run typecheck npm run generate:catalog # regenerate src/catalog.json after changing ../src/pricing.js or routes npm pack --dry-run # inspect the publish tarball

The endpoint catalog (src/catalog.json) is generated from ../src/catalog.js, the same module that builds the API's JSON manifest and /llms.txt (it reads src/pricing.js, src/new-routes.js and src/ai-routes.js). Tests in both packages fail if it drifts from src/pricing.js. tsc bakes the catalog into dist/catalog.json, so the published package never reads the repo at runtime; prepublishOnly regenerates the catalog, rebuilds, and runs the tests.