| name | fred |
| description | Query the St. Louis Fed (FRED) economic data API. Use this skill to search for economic data series, fetch observations (GDP, unemployment, inflation, etc.), or browse FRED's catalog of categories/releases/sources. Trigger when the user asks about economic data, Fed data, FRED series, or wants to fetch/chart economic indicators. |
FRED Economic Data Skill
This skill gives you direct access to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED) API via a local Node.js CLI — no MCP server required.
The CLI lives at <SKILL_DIR>/scripts/cli.js. Replace <SKILL_DIR> with the absolute path to this skill's base directory (sometimes shown in the Base directory header when the skill loads). It requires Node 18+ (for built-in fetch). No npm install needed.
About FRED
FRED hosts over 800,000 economic time series from ~100 sources — BLS, BEA, Census, Federal Reserve, IMF, World Bank, and others. It covers US macroeconomic indicators (GDP, inflation, unemployment, interest rates, money supply), regional and state-level data, international comparisons, and financial market series. Most series are free and publicly available.
Discovery pattern: If you don't have a series ID, search first to find candidates, then get-series to pull the data. If you're exploring a topic area, browse lets you navigate the category tree or find everything within a release (e.g., all CPI series from the BLS CPI release).
Key concepts:
- A series ID is the stable identifier for a data series (e.g.,
UNRATE, GDP, CPIAUCSL). These are the primary thing to find and use.
- A release groups related series published together (e.g., the BLS publishes UNRATE, labor force participation, and dozens of other series in a single monthly release).
- A category is FRED's own topical organization of series (e.g., "Prices > CPI").
- Seasonal adjustment matters —
UNRATE (seasonally adjusted) and UNRATENSA (not) have different behavior; check the seasonal_adjustment field to know what you have.
- Missing values appear as
null in observations — common at the start of transformed series (e.g., year-over-year change has no value for the first year).
Commands
1. Search for series
Use this when you have a topic or concept but don't know the series ID. Sort by popularity to surface the most-used series first — for common indicators, the top result is usually what you want.
node <SKILL_DIR>/scripts/cli.js search --text "unemployment rate" --limit 10
node <SKILL_DIR>/scripts/cli.js search --text "CPI" --order-by popularity --sort desc --limit 5
node <SKILL_DIR>/scripts/cli.js search --text "GDP" --type series_id
node <SKILL_DIR>/scripts/cli.js search --tags "monthly,nsa" --limit 20
Options:
--text <str> — search query (required unless --tags is used)--type <str> — full_text (default) or series_id (matches against the ID string itself)--tags <str> — comma-separated FRED tag names to filter by (e.g. monthly, nsa, usa, bls)--exclude-tags <str> — comma-separated tag names to exclude--limit <n> — max results (default: 25, max: 1000)--offset <n> — pagination offset--order-by <field> — search_rank, series_id, title, units, frequency, popularity, group_popularity, last_updated, observation_start, observation_end, seasonal_adjustment, realtime_start, realtime_end--sort <asc|desc> — sort order--filter-var <str> — frequency, units, or seasonal_adjustment--filter-val <str> — value for the filter variable (e.g. Monthly, Percent)
--type, --filter-var, --filter-val only apply when --text is given. Tags-only searches use a different endpoint that does not support these options. search_rank and group_popularity are also invalid --order-by values for tags-only searches.
Returns: JSON with count (total matching), limit, offset, showing (results in this page), and seriess array. Each series has: id, title, units, frequency, seasonal_adjustment, observation_start, observation_end, last_updated, popularity, notes.
2. Fetch series data (observations)
Use this once you have a series ID. By default returns the full history in ascending date order. Use --start/--end to narrow the window, --sort desc --limit N to get the most recent N observations, and --units/--frequency to apply transformations server-side.
node <SKILL_DIR>/scripts/cli.js get-series --id GDP
node <SKILL_DIR>/scripts/cli.js get-series --id UNRATE --start 2020-01-01 --end 2024-12-31
node <SKILL_DIR>/scripts/cli.js get-series --id CPIAUCSL --units pc1 --frequency a
node <SKILL_DIR>/scripts/cli.js get-series --id DFF --limit 30 --sort desc
Options:
--id <series_id> — REQUIRED. Series ID (e.g. GDP, UNRATE, CPIAUCSL, DFF, T10Y2Y)--start <YYYY-MM-DD> — observation start date--end <YYYY-MM-DD> — observation end date--limit <n> — max observations to return (max: 100000)--offset <n> — pagination offset--sort <asc|desc> — sort by date (default: asc)--units <str> — data transformation applied by FRED before returning:
lin — levels (no transformation, default)chg — change from prior periodch1 — change from one year agopch — percent change from prior periodpc1 — percent change from one year agopca — compounded annual rate of changecch — continuously compounded rate of changecca — continuously compounded annual rate of changelog — natural log
--frequency <str> — aggregate to lower frequency: d (daily), w (weekly), bw (biweekly), m (monthly), q (quarterly), sa (semiannual), a (annual)--aggregation <str> — how to aggregate when downsampling: avg (default), sum, or eop (end of period)--vintage <str> — comma-separated vintage dates (YYYY-MM-DD) for real-time/as-published data (ALFRED feature — may return an error if the series has no vintage history available with your API key)
Returns: JSON with series_id, title, units, frequency, seasonal_adjustment, observation_start, observation_end (full series range, not the filtered window), count, source, notes, and observations array. Each observation has date (YYYY-MM-DD) and value (number, or null for missing).
3. Describe a series
Use this to understand a series you've found — which category it lives in, which release publishes it, and what tags it carries. Useful for finding related series (search by the same tags, or browse the same release).
node <SKILL_DIR>/scripts/cli.js describe --id UNRATE
node <SKILL_DIR>/scripts/cli.js describe --id CPIAUCSL
Options:
--id <series_id> — REQUIRED. Series ID
Returns: JSON with series_id, categories (array of {id, name, parent_id}), release ({id, name, link} or null), and tags (array of tag name strings, ordered by popularity).
4. Browse catalog
Use this to explore FRED's structure when you don't have a starting point, enumerate series within a release or category, or check the upcoming release calendar.
node <SKILL_DIR>/scripts/cli.js browse --type categories
node <SKILL_DIR>/scripts/cli.js browse --type categories --category-id 32455
node <SKILL_DIR>/scripts/cli.js browse --type category_series --category-id 32455 --limit 20
node <SKILL_DIR>/scripts/cli.js browse --type release_series --release-id 10
node <SKILL_DIR>/scripts/cli.js browse --type releases --limit 30
node <SKILL_DIR>/scripts/cli.js browse --type sources
node <SKILL_DIR>/scripts/cli.js browse --type release_dates --limit 20
node <SKILL_DIR>/scripts/cli.js browse --type release_dates --start 2026-04-14 --end 2026-04-30
Options:
--type <str> — REQUIRED. One of: categories, category_series, releases, release_series, sources, release_dates--category-id <n> — category ID (required for category_series; optional for categories, defaults to root)--release-id <n> — release ID (required for release_series)--start <YYYY-MM-DD> — start date for release_dates (defaults to today)--end <YYYY-MM-DD> — end date for release_dates--limit <n> — max results (default: 50; not applicable to categories)--offset <n> — pagination offset--order-by <str> — field to sort by--sort <asc|desc> — sort order
Returns by type:
categories → {type, parent_id, categories: [{id, name, parent_id}]}category_series → {type, category_id, count, seriess: [series objects]}releases → {type, count, releases: [{id, name, press_release, link, notes}]}release_series → {type, release_id, count, seriess: [series objects]}sources → {type, count, sources: [{id, name, realtime_start, realtime_end, link}]}release_dates → {type, count, release_dates: [{release_id, release_name, date}]}
Series objects in seriess arrays contain: id, title, units, frequency, seasonal_adjustment, observation_start, observation_end, last_updated, popularity, notes.
Working with Large or Complex Data
For small fetches (a dozen observations, a quick lookup), reading JSON output directly is fine. For anything larger or requiring further processing, redirect output to a temp file:
node <SKILL_DIR>/scripts/cli.js get-series --id GDP --start 2000-01-01 > /tmp/fred_GDP.json
When to use a file:
- Large datasets — hundreds of observations will bloat context and make analysis harder. Write to a file and process with
jq, Python, or similar.
- Charting — generating a chart requires a script to consume the data. Write to a file first, then pass the path to your charting script.
- Cross-series joins — combining multiple series is cleaner when each is a file you can join programmatically.
Naming convention:
/tmp/fred_<SERIES_ID>.json
/tmp/fred_<SERIES_ID>_pc1.json
Workflow Tips
- Finding a series ID: sort search results by
popularity desc — the canonical series for any common indicator is nearly always in the top 3 results.
- Getting the latest value:
--sort desc --limit 1
- Year-over-year changes:
--units pc1 — FRED applies the transformation server-side, no post-processing needed.
- Annual average of a monthly series:
--frequency a --aggregation avg
- Comparing seasonally adjusted vs. unadjusted: search returns both; check the
seasonal_adjustment field. The SA version usually has SL or no suffix; NSA versions often have NS or NSA in the ID.
- Understanding a series: the
notes field in search and get-series output contains the official methodology description — it's worth reading for anything non-obvious.
- Release-based discovery: if you want all series from a specific data release (e.g., the Employment Situation from BLS),
browse --type releases to find the release ID, then browse --type release_series to enumerate its series.
- Finding related series:
describe --id <series> returns the release and tags for a series — you can then search those same tags or browse that release to find closely related series.
- Release calendar:
browse --type release_dates shows what economic data is being published soon, useful for knowing when GDP, CPI, jobs numbers, etc. are next due.
- Rate limit: FRED strictly enforces a limit of 120 requests/minute and does NOT allow parallel requests. If you trigger rate limits you may get banned so be careful with loops or multiple calls. For large data needs, it's best to fetch once to a file and then work with the file rather than making multiple API calls.
