Home / Blog / From npm install to MCP-in-Claude in 60 seconds

2026-05-20 · Harry Vass

From npm install to MCP-in-Claude in 60 seconds

A 60-second walkthrough to wire ausdata-mcp into Claude Desktop and ask it for live Australian macro data, cash rate, CPI, unemployment.

I keep getting the same question on Discord: "how do I actually get Australian data into Claude?" Fair question. The Model Context Protocol docs are written for protocol authors, not for the people who just want to ask Claude what the cash rate is and get a number with a citation.

Here's the entire flow. End to end. Counted on a stopwatch.

<!-- IMG: claude-desktop-mcp-setup-screenshot.png -->

The 60-second path

Step 1, get a free key (10 seconds).

curl -X POST https://api.ausdata.io/v1/register \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"email": "[email protected]"}'

Output:

{
  "api_key": "ak_live_...",
  "tier": "free",
  "monthly_quota": 500,
  "warning": "Save this key. It is shown only once."
}

You don't need a credit card. Free tier is 500 calls/month and includes every endpoint.

Step 2, edit Claude Desktop config (30 seconds).

On macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

On Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ausdata": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "ausdata-mcp@latest"],
      "env": {
        "AUSDATA_API_KEY": "ak_live_..."
      }
    }
  }
}

That's it. No global install, no Python venv, no Docker. npx -y pulls the package on first launch and caches it. You don't need to babysit updates.

Step 3, restart Claude Desktop (10 seconds).

Quit fully (Cmd-Q on macOS, not just close-window) and reopen. You'll see a small hammer icon in the message signal, that's MCP tools loaded.

Step 4, ask Claude a question (10 seconds).

> What's the current RBA cash rate, and what's the real cash rate after subtracting trimmed-mean CPI?

Claude calls cash_rate(), gets back the live number plus the signal-computed real rate, and cites the source URL in its answer. No copy-paste from rba.gov.au. No CSV parsing. Sixty seconds, including the coffee sip.

What you can ask now

Once it's wired, these are the questions that actually work:

  • "What's the current cash rate and the last 12 months of changes?"
  • "Show me Australia's trade balance for the last 6 months."
  • "What's the youth unemployment rate? How has it moved since 2020?"
  • "Quote me CPI for last quarter and what the trimmed mean was."
  • "What's the gender pay gap in Australia right now? Source it for me."

Each call returns a DataResponse envelope with source, source_url, attribution, and retrieved_at. Claude will cite the source in its answer, you don't have to ask.

Why MCP instead of a plugin

A few people have asked why we bother with MCP at all when Claude can just browse to rba.gov.au. Two reasons.

First, browsing is slow and unreliable. Claude has to load the page, parse it, find the right table, ignore the noise. For the cash rate it usually works. For F-table 11.1 with multi-row headers on rows 6 and 11, it doesn't.

Second, MCP gives structured returns. The number comes back as 4.35, not "4.35%" embedded in a sentence. That matters when Claude is doing maths, it can subtract CPI from cash-rate cleanly because both are typed float.

Third, slightly hand-wavier but real, MCP responses include an explicit source, source_url, attribution, and retrieved_at. When Claude writes its answer, the citation is structurally available, not something it has to remember to lift from page chrome. The hallucination surface for "where did this number come from" shrinks to almost nothing.

Troubleshooting the things that always go wrong

The hammer icon doesn't appear after restart. Two causes, in order of frequency:

  1. You quit by closing the window instead of Cmd-Q. Claude Desktop keeps running in the menu bar. Use Quit from the menu.
  2. JSON syntax error in claude_desktop_config.json. Trailing comma, missing brace, smart-quotes from a copy-paste. Run python -m json.tool < claude_desktop_config.json to validate.

npx complains about not finding the package. This happens on machines where node is installed but npx is on an old version. Update Node to 20 or later, ausdata-mcp targets modern Node.

The MCP server starts but every call returns 401. Your AUSDATA_API_KEY value is wrong, or has surrounding whitespace from the copy. Re-run curl /v1/whoami from the terminal to verify the key works directly, then paste it into the config.

The MCP server starts but tools time out. Likely a corporate firewall blocking api.ausdata.io. The hostname resolves to a Fly.io edge, if your network whitelists by domain rather than IP, add api.ausdata.io.

Async, CLI, MCP, same key

The same ak_live_... works against the REST API, the Python SDK, the CLI, and the MCP server. One key, four surfaces:

# CLI
$ ausdata cashrate
RBA cash rate: 4.35% (as of 2026-05-06)

# Python
$ python -c "from ausdata import Ausdata; print(Ausdata().series("AU.CASHRATE"))"

# REST
$ curl -H "X-API-Key: ak_live_..." https://api.ausdata.io/v1/real-rate-regime

# MCP, already wired in Claude Desktop

What this isn't

ausdata-mcp is not:

  • A scraper for suburb-level real estate prices (try CoreLogic or Domain APIs).
  • A live KYC / company-officer lookup (try Kyckr or Vigil).
  • A 5-minute wholesale electricity bid-stack feed (use AEMO NEMWeb directly, or OpenElectricity which does this beautifully).
  • A replacement for readabs or readrba if you're an R user, those are excellent.

It is an honest, citation-ready surface over ten public AU data agencies that ships in 60 seconds and doesn't break when the source HTML changes.

Pricing

  • Free: 500 calls/month, personal use, side projects, Claude Desktop tinkering.
  • Analyst: $29/mo, 10k calls, journalists, researchers, single-seat data work.
  • Pro: $99/mo, 100k calls, webhooks, tools that ship AU data inside their product.

Free tier is genuinely free. No card, no trial expiry. Grab a key at ausdata.io.

Sources

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