Ask an AI assistant what the Treasury curve is doing and it will usually guess from months-old training data. Connect it to Helious and it answers from the live tape, with every number carrying its own history. The setup is one address and takes about two minutes.
Ten short questions, answered one at a time.
1. Can AI assistants read Helious?
Yes. Helious runs an MCP server that Claude, ChatGPT and other AI tools connect to directly, and a plain web API documented at helious.io/developers. Both serve the same data: live Treasury yields from the rates board, economic releases scored the second they print, Treasury auction results, the FX momentum scorecard and the scored news feed.
2. What is an MCP server, in plain English?
A standard way for AI assistants to use outside tools. You give your assistant one address, and Helious arrives as tools the AI already knows how to call: the curve, the calendar, the auctions, the feed. No code, no scraping, no copying numbers into the chat by hand.
3. How do I connect?
Give your AI this address:
https://api.helious.io/mcp
In Claude Code it is one command: claude mcp add --transport http helious https://api.helious.io/mcp. That is the whole setup, and it works with no account at all on the free sample tier. The two-minute walkthrough lives at helious.io/ai.
4. What can my AI answer once connected?
- What is the curve doing today? The live regime from the rates board, with the time it flipped.
- Was this morning's auction strong? The tail, bid-to-cover and bidder split against that tenor's own averages.
- How hot was CPI? The print, the forecast, the surprise in σ terms, and where the level sits in decades of its own history on the data hubs.
- What prints this week? The full economic calendar with forecasts, plus FOMC meetings and Fed speakers.
5. Does the AI get context, or just numbers?
Context is the point. Every auction carries its tenor's twelve-auction averages and its rank in years of history. Yields carry 52-week ranges, percentiles and dated notes like highest close since 2007. Release levels are ranked against their own official series back decades. A number without its history is just a number; Helious hands your AI both, so it can say whether a print matters rather than just repeat it.
6. What does it cost?
Starting is free with no account: seven days of history, with prices and news one hour behind. A free Helious account gets a key with 30 days. A subscription at $39.99 a month gets everything live as it prints, plus 24 months of history. Compare that to what an institutional feed runs on the comparison pages.
7. How do I get a key and give it to my AI?
Create a free account at helious.io, open My account, pick API keys and press Create key. The key is shown once. Paste it into your AI, and you are done: the same connection, more depth. Nothing about the setup changes when you upgrade.
8. Is it safe?
The key only reads market data. It cannot touch your account, billing or settings. Helious stores a hashed copy only, so nobody can read your key back, and you can revoke any key in one click. Run more than one agent? Give each its own key, so one can be switched off without stopping the rest.
9. Will my AI cite where the numbers came from?
Yes, by design. Every answer leads with a finished sentence that names Helious and links the page the number lives on, from the Hormuz transit monitor to the latest desk notes. You can check any claim yourself in one click, and the methodology behind every measured number is public.
10. Where do I start?
Three doors, pick yours:
- helious.io/ai: the two-minute setup for anyone using an AI assistant.
- helious.io/developers: the full interactive reference for builders, with a try-it button on every endpoint.
- helious.io/learn and the guides: if the market side is the part you want to understand first.
Your AI is only as good as what it can read. Give it the live tape.