What Happen

What Happen MCP Server provides backend data services for the What Happen news aggregation platform. It aggregates news from 70+ sources, supports the MCP protocol, offers a CLI with JSON and friendly output, and runs with a lightweight, high-performance crawler based on Cheerio and Axios.

How to use

You use this MCP server by connecting an MCP client to it to request news data. The server exposes endpoints and tools that let you list available platforms, fetch news by platform, and fetch news by category. Use the client to request what you need, then render or process the results in your application.

Practical usage patterns include:Listing all supported platforms to see what you can query.Fetching the latest news items from a specific platform such as GitHub or Weibo with optional limits.Fetching news by category like tech, hot, or entertainment to surface curated topics in your UI.

How to install

Prerequisites you need before installing: Node.js and npm. Ensure Node.js is installed and available on your system.

Install the MCP server tools and run the server locally by following these steps.

# Clone the project repository
git clone https://github.com/LYX9527/what-happen-mcp.git
cd what-happen-mcp

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Build the project
npm run build

# Run the MCP server
npm start

Additional notes

You can run the CLI to interact with the server and explore available platforms and news data. For example, you can list platforms or fetch news by platform or category using the CLI, and you can configure the MCP server to be accessible by your frontend by pointing it to the server’s base URL.

Configuration examples

To run the MCP as a standalone server via npx, you can use the following configuration. This uses the latest published MCP package without requiring a local install.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "what-happen": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "what-happen-mcp@latest"
      ]
    }
  }
}

If you prefer to run a locally installed version, this environment uses the global command path. It keeps the runtime invocation simple and relies on the local installation of the MCP package.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "what-happen": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "what-happen-mcp",
      "env": {},
      "alwaysAllow": ["get_news_by_platform", "get_news_by_category", "list_platforms"]
    }
  }
}

Or, if you want to run a local path version directly with Node, use this configuration. It runs the built script from a local path.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "what-happen": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "node",
      "args": [
        "path/to/what-happen-mcp/build/index.js"
      ],
      "env": {},
      "alwaysAllow": ["get_news_by_platform", "get_news_by_category", "list_platforms"]
    }
  }
}

Security and best practices

Ensure only trusted MCP clients can access your server. If you expose the HTTP-based MCP server URL, implement proper access controls and monitor usage to prevent abuse.

Available tools

get_news_by_platform

Fetches news items from a specific platform. Requires platform and optional limit. Supports 70+ platforms.

get_news_by_category

Fetches news items by category such as hot, tech, finance, social, entertainment, sports, car. Optional limit.

list_platforms

Lists all available platforms and their categories.