This one-minute video connects FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data, from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis) to Claude through the official qbash MCP server. After you save your own FRED API key, you can ask about the economy in plain English. Claude finds the matching FRED series, pulls the numbers and charts them in the chat.
What's covered
- Asking Claude to connect FRED through qbash
- Saving a FRED API key on the page qbash links to
- Charting inflation since 2020 next to the Fed Funds rate
- Checking the FRED release calendar
Connect FRED
With the official qbash MCP server added to Claude, Alex asks Claude to connect FRED. qbash returns a link to a page where he pastes his FRED API key and saves it. A FRED account and its API key are free.
Ask about the economy
Claude searches FRED for the series that match a plain-English question and reads their observations. In the video it charts inflation since 2020 next to the Fed Funds rate, built from the live data. It can also read the FRED release calendar, which shows when the next numbers come out.
The same server lets Claude build and run qbash Tasks in Python and call the other connectors on your qbash account.
Connect FRED covers the API key and every method the connector has. FRED MCP server lists what the connector can do, and Official MCP server has the setup steps for Claude, ChatGPT, Codex and Cursor.
Video transcript
qbash connects Claude to Fred, the Federal Reserve's economic database. I asked Claude to connect Fred through qbash. It gives me a link to add to my Fred API key. I paste in my key and save it. Now, I can ask about the economy in plain English.
Claude finds the right series and pulls the numbers. Here's inflation since 2020 next to the Fed funds rate charted from the real data. It can also check the release calendar, so I know when new numbers land. Connect Fred to qbash to get it started.