# Quick RSS puts your subscriptions behind an MCP endpoint > Quick RSS is a native macOS and iOS RSS reader built with SwiftUI that also serves an MCP endpoint, letting a client such as Claude Desktop, Cursor or VS Code list feeds, find articles and read the latest content from the subscriptions already in the app. **jaywcjlove/quick-rss** — A powerful and intuitive macOS desktop RSS reader that helps you manage and read your favorite RSS feeds with ease. - Repository: https://github.com/jaywcjlove/quick-rss - Website: https://wangchujiang.com/quick-rss/ - Stars: 608 · Forks: 28 - Language: Swift - License: not declared - Published: 2026-10-22 · Updated: 2026-10-22 · Language: en - Canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/jaywcjlove-quick-rss ## A native reader, with a community feed attached Quick RSS is described as an easy-to-use, private and intuitive desktop RSS reader, and the platform requirements are stated plainly: a minimum OS requirement of macOS 14.0 and iOS 17.0. The implementation is Swift and SwiftUI, and the topics list the usual collection of tags for a native Mac app. The reader itself is a conventional feed client with three stated selling points. It supports multiple RSS feeds, whether news sites, blogs or video updates. It is lightweight and efficient, using minimal system resources so it does not get in the way during a working session. And it is customizable, with adjustable subscription and notification settings. The audience is described as news enthusiasts, blog followers, developers and designers who want to keep up with trends, and users who want several subscriptions in one place. The screenshots in the README show a list view and detail views, and the app is distributed through the App Store for both Mac and iPhone, with a download badge for each. Alongside the app there is a content project. The repository carries a feeds directory, a curated feed of tech related links, and an OPML export of the author's own favourite subscriptions, both published at a stable URL. The README asks readers to contribute feeds through an issue form, and says that submissions are added automatically to the community feed. That makes the repository as much a subscription list as a code archive. ## The MCP service exposes what the app has already fetched The most interesting feature is not the reader. Quick RSS supports the Model Context Protocol, which allows MCP clients such as Claude Desktop, Cursor and VS Code to access your subscriptions. The setup is four steps. Update Quick RSS to v2.8.0 or later, enable the MCP service in Quick RSS Settings, copy the MCP configuration generated by the app and add it to your MCP client, then restart the MCP client to browse feeds, find articles and retrieve the latest content in a conversation. The scoping rule is the part that decides whether you should turn it on. The MCP service only accesses subscription and article data currently in Quick RSS, and the README adds that you should add its configuration only to clients you trust. That is a narrower promise than it might first appear, and it is a good one. The client is not fetching feeds from the internet on your behalf, it is reading what the app has already downloaded, so the blast radius of a mistrusted client is bounded by the articles you have already chosen to subscribe to. It still means the client can read your reading list, which is why the trust warning is there. The versioning detail is worth noting as well. The MCP service arrived in v2.8.0, so the requirement to update first is not advice but a hard floor, and the releases v2.6.0, v2.7.0 and v2.8.0 all landed on consecutive days in August 2026. ## Four ways to point a client at the local endpoint The app generates the configuration, and the README shows several shapes for it, which covers the different ways an MCP client can be configured. The plainest is an HTTP URL with the token in the query string: ```toml [mcp_servers.quickrss] url = "http://127.0.0.1:8745/mcp?token=" enabled = true ``` The second keeps the token out of the URL and passes it as a header instead: ```ini [mcp_servers.quickrss] url = "http://127.0.0.1:8745/mcp" headers = { "Authorization" = "Bearer ${QUICKRSS_MCP_TOKEN}" } ``` The third does not involve a running server at all. The client launches the application itself with a command and an argument: ```ini [mcp_servers.quickrss] command = "/Applications/QuickRSS.app/Contents/MacOS/QuickRSS" args = ["--mcp"] enabled = true ``` The fourth is a command line client managing the entry for you: ```bash # Add the Quick RSS MCP server grok mcp add --transport http quickrss "http://127.0.0.1:8745/mcp?token=" # Remove the Quick RSS MCP server grok mcp remove quickrss # List configured MCP servers grok mcp list # Diagnose the Quick RSS MCP server connection grok mcp doctor quickrss ``` The last command is the one to reach for when a connection fails, because a local HTTP endpoint that is not running and a token that does not match produce similar symptoms otherwise. The configuration file can also be edited directly, at the path ~/.grok/config.toml. The port in all of these is 8745 on the loopback interface, and the service is bound to localhost, which is a sensible default for something that exposes your reading list. ## Testing the connection, and what you can ask for The README gives a concrete test to send once the connector is enabled, which is the fastest way to confirm the whole chain works: ```text List the five most recently updated articles in my Quick RSS subscriptions, including each title, feed, and publication date. ``` There is also a slash command, /mcps, to check whether the MCP server is running, and the README explains what a successful result looks like: Grok calls a Quick RSS MCP tool and returns articles from the current subscriptions. The test prompt is well chosen as a probe, because it exercises exactly what the service is scoped to. It asks for recent articles, their feeds and their publication dates, and it says in my subscriptions, which is the boundary the README states. A client that cannot answer that is misconfigured, and a client that answers it is reading local data rather than the live web. For an evaluator, the useful experiment is to try asking for something the service is not scoped to, such as a feed the app has never subscribed to, and to see how the client reports that. The scope is enforced by what the app has, so the boundary should show up as a normal error rather than a mysterious empty result. ## The curated feed, the OPML export and the community round trip The repository maintains a curated set of high-quality RSS feeds and encourages people to share their favourites. Two published artefacts come out of that. The first is the Quick RSS Feed, collected and shared as tech related content, published at: ``` https://wangchujiang.com/quick-rss/feed.xml ``` The second is the author's own list of favourites, exported as OPML, which is the interchange format that feed readers import: ``` https://wangchujiang.com/quick-rss/opml.xml ``` Contributions come through an issue form, and the README states that submissions are automatically added to the RSS feed for the community. That is a simple mechanism, and it has a visible consequence: the feed is shaped by whoever contributes to it, so its value depends on the moderation that happens in the issue tracker. The README also lists some other feeds as starting points, among them SwiftUl Recipes, MacStories, Fatbobman's Swift Weekly and Marco.org, and invites people to share more. For a user, the practical sequence is that a reader can import the OPML file, subscribe to the community feed for discovery, and then add feeds of their own. The App Store links at the top of the README cover both the macOS and the iOS builds, and the changelog link points at the GitHub releases page, which is where the version history for the app lives. ## A repository that is mostly the website and the feed The top-level entries are worth reading carefully, because they describe what this repository actually is. There is an assets directory with the logo and the screenshots, a docs directory, the feeds directory, the README in English and in Chinese, a CHANGELOG in both languages, a package.json, a renovate.json for dependency updates, and the .github directory. The package.json is the giveaway. It is marked private, its version is 1.0.0, its licence field says MIT, and its dependencies are the tooling for the content site rather than for an application: the feed package for generating an RSS feed, fs-extra for file operations, a markdown-to-html converter, rehype-video for embedding video in the generated pages, xml-js for XML handling, and the GitHub Actions core package for a workflow. There is no Swift source in the tree and no build for a macOS app, so the reader's source is not what lives here. The README also carries an idoc configuration block with the site name, title and keywords, which is the marker for the static site generator the project uses to publish the page at wangchujiang.com/quick-rss. The site is therefore generated from the repository, and the feed is generated from the feeds directory. The practical consequence for an adopter is that this repository is where the feed content and the documentation live, and it is where issues about the app are filed. The app itself is distributed through the App Store and through GitHub releases, and its recorded licence is unresolved even though the package.json for the site tooling says MIT. Both statements point to the same licence file, but the app's own terms are worth reading directly rather than inferring them from a build tool's manifest. ## Release cadence, platform floor and licence The release history shows a burst of activity in August 2026, with v2.6.0 and v2.7.0 on the same day on 2026-08-20 and v2.8.0 on 2026-08-21. The last push to the repository was on 2026-10-15, and the repository is not archived. The platform floor is the hard constraint for anyone considering it. macOS 14.0 and iOS 17.0 are the minimum requirements, which in practice means a machine from the last few years. There is no Linux or Windows build mentioned, and the topic list is entirely macOS and Swift oriented, so the project is an Apple-platform application rather than a general feed reader. The licence situation needs the same care as the rest. The licence recorded for the repository is unresolved, while the package.json declares MIT for the site tooling. Since the feed content and the documentation are the parts of the repository most likely to be reused, the licence file in the repository is the document to read, and this is a reading of where the terms are rather than legal advice. The most recent release is also the one that introduced the feature that makes this project interesting to an engineering audience. The MCP service arrived in v2.8.0, and everything before that was a conventional native RSS reader. That is the boundary to keep in mind when reading older discussions of the app, since they will describe a client with no AI integration at all. ## Conclusion Quick RSS fits a macOS or iOS user who wants a native feed reader and, in the same app, a way to let an AI client read what has already been fetched, since the MCP service exposes the subscription and article data that is already in the app rather than fetching from the network. It is the wrong choice for a cross-platform or server-side feed pipeline, since the minimum requirements are macOS 14 and iOS 17, and it is the wrong choice if you want the client to reach feeds that the app itself has not subscribed to. Before adopting it, read the security note in the README, which limits the service to data already in Quick RSS, and note that the MCP configuration carries a token that should be treated as a credential. ## FAQ ### How do I enable MCP support in Quick RSS? Update Quick RSS to v2.8.0 or later, enable the MCP service in Quick RSS Settings, copy the MCP configuration generated by the app and add it to your MCP client, then restart the client. The service listens on the local HTTP endpoint at port 8745. ### What can an MCP client see through the Quick RSS MCP service? Only subscription and article data currently in Quick RSS, so the client reads what the app has already fetched rather than fetching feeds itself. The README also warns you to add the configuration only to clients you trust. ### How do I add the Quick RSS MCP server with a command line client? Use grok mcp add --transport http quickrss with the server URL including the token. The same tool can remove the server with grok mcp remove quickrss, list configured servers with grok mcp list and diagnose the connection with grok mcp doctor quickrss. ### What are the system requirements for Quick RSS? The minimum OS requirement is macOS 14.0 and iOS 17.0, and the app is distributed through the App Store for both the Mac and the iPhone. The implementation is Swift with SwiftUI. ### Where can I find a shared list of feeds from the Quick RSS project? The curated tech feed is published at https://wangchujiang.com/quick-rss/feed.xml and the author's favourites are exported as OPML at https://wangchujiang.com/quick-rss/opml.xml. People can contribute through an issue form, and submissions are added to the community feed. ## Sources - [Issues](https://github.com/jaywcjlove/quick-rss/issues) - [jaywcjlove/quick-rss on GitHub](https://github.com/jaywcjlove/quick-rss) - [Project website](https://wangchujiang.com/quick-rss/) - [README](https://github.com/jaywcjlove/quick-rss/blob/main/README.md) - [Releases](https://github.com/jaywcjlove/quick-rss/releases) --- Hysen Labs editorial analysis, written from the project's own repository and release notes. Cite the canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/jaywcjlove-quick-rss