AI Assistants and Search
AI assistants and search tools can find Featured News stories, read them, answer questions about the news with them, and cite them with a link to the story.
Republishing Is for Approved Publishers
Free to read, quote and cite with a link. Republishing is licensed only to approved Featured News publishers through the publisher hub (apply: https://news.featured.com/publishers).
How publishers applyWhat Assistants Can Do
- Find stories on a news topic, by beat or format, or by an expert’s name or company.
- Read a story in full to answer a question about it, and summarize it.
- Quote a line, naming the expert with their title and company as shown on the story, and link to the story’s canonical URL.
Markdown Pages
- Send
Accept: text/markdownto any page URL, including the home page. - Or append
.mdto any page URL, for example /about.md. - Or add
?mode=agentto any page URL. - Start from /index.md or the full sitemap.md. Each story opens with frontmatter: title, description, canonical URL, published and updated dates, and license.
- Unknown paths return a real 404, with a markdown body when you ask for markdown.
Lookup Endpoints
Read-only JSON at https://news.featured.com/api/v1, no authentication, described by /openapi.json (OpenAPI 3.1).
| Endpoint | Returns |
|---|---|
| GET /api/v1/stories?beat=&format=&page=&limit= | Live stories, newest first, with headline, summary, beat, format, dates, editor and author. |
| GET /api/v1/stories/{slug} | One story: each expert perspective with name, title, company and profile link, or the byline or interview; corrections; the canonical link; and who may republish it. |
| GET /api/v1/search?q= | Stories matching words in the headline, dek or question, or an expert's name or company. |
| GET /api/v1/beats | Beats with their topics and live story counts. |
| GET /api/v1/authors | Guest authors with a live byline. |
Errors are JSON: {"error": {"code": "story_not_found", "message": "...", "hint": "..."}}, with 400 for bad parameters, 404 for unknown stories and endpoints, 405 for writes and 429 over the rate limit.
MCP Server
Streamable HTTP at https://news.featured.com/api/mcp, stateless, no authentication. Tools, all read-only: search_stories, list_stories, get_story, list_beats. Server card at /.well-known/mcp/server-card.json, manifest at /mcp.json.
To add it to a client that takes a JSON config: {"mcpServers": {"featured-news": {"url": "https://news.featured.com/api/mcp"}}}.
Rate Limits
60 requests per 60 seconds per client IP across /api/v1/* and /api/mcp, enforced at the edge. Every response carries RateLimit-Policy: "per-ip";q=60;w=60. Over the limit you receive HTTP 429; wait for the window to reset (at most 60 seconds) before retrying.
Versioning and Deprecation
Path-versioned: /api/v1/ is stable and only gains optional fields. A breaking change ships under a new major path (/api/v2/), and /api/v1/ keeps serving for at least 90 days after the new version launches, announced in advance with Deprecation and Sunset response headers (RFC 9745, RFC 8594), in llms.txt and on https://news.featured.com/ai.
Discovery
- /llms.txt: when to use Featured News, and how.
- /.well-known/api-catalog: RFC 9727 API catalog.
- /robots.txt:
Content-Signal: search=yes, ai-input=yes, ai-train=no. Use stories for search and for answering with a citation, not for training models. - /sitemap.xml.
Questions
Email news@featured.com.