How to Search FRED Economic Data from Claude Code

Claude Code can reason about data, but it doesn’t have live access to economic indicators. If you’re working on anything that touches macroeconomic data — financial models, policy analysis, data pipelines — you need actual series IDs and metadata from FRED. AgentPatch’s FRED Search tool gives Claude Code direct access to the Federal Reserve’s database of over 800,000 economic data series.

Why This Matters

FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) is the standard source for US economic data: GDP, unemployment, CPI, interest rates, housing prices, and hundreds of thousands of other series. The problem is that finding the right series ID requires navigating the FRED website, guessing at naming conventions, and cross-referencing metadata like frequency and seasonal adjustment.

With FRED Search available as a tool, Claude Code can look up series programmatically. Ask it to find the right unemployment rate series and it’ll search FRED, compare the options, and tell you which series ID to use based on frequency, seasonal adjustment, and how recently it was updated. That’s faster than browsing fred.stlouisfed.org yourself.

Setup

Install the AgentPatch CLI (zero dependencies, Python 3.10+):

pip install agentpatch

Set your API key:

export AGENTPATCH_API_KEY=your_api_key

Then use it:

ap search "web search"
ap run agentpatch google-search --input '{"query": "test"}'

Get your API key from the AgentPatch dashboard.

Run this command to add AgentPatch as an MCP server:

claude mcp add -s user --transport http agentpatch https://agentpatch.ai/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

Replace YOUR_API_KEY with your actual key from the AgentPatch dashboard. Claude Code discovers all AgentPatch tools automatically.

Example

You’re building a data pipeline and need to pull in some labor market indicators. You ask Claude Code:

“I need to add unemployment data to this pipeline. What FRED series should I use for the headline unemployment rate?”

Claude Code searches FRED directly:

Searching FRED for "unemployment rate"...

Found several options. The one you want is UNRATE — "Unemployment Rate",
published monthly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It's seasonally adjusted,
reported as a percent, and was last updated on February 7, 2026. It has the
highest popularity score of any unemployment series in FRED.

There's also U6RATE if you want the broader measure that includes
underemployment, or UNRATENSA for the non-seasonally-adjusted version.

Want me to wire UNRATE into the pipeline config?

Claude Code found the right series, explained the alternatives, and offered to integrate it. No browser tab, no guessing at series IDs.

This works the same way for any economic indicator — inflation metrics, interest rates, housing starts, consumer sentiment. If it’s in FRED, Claude Code can find it.

Wrapping Up

AgentPatch gives Claude Code access to FRED’s full catalog of economic data series at 50 credits per search. The same connection also unlocks every other tool on the marketplace — web search, email, image generation, and more. Check out what’s available at agentpatch.ai.

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