How to Connect Your AI to Live Market Data
Ask an AI assistant what the Treasury curve is doing and it will usually guess from training data that is months old. Point it at Helious and it reads the live tape instead, with the history behind every number it quotes back. The setup is one address and takes about two minutes.
1. Can AI assistants read Helious?
Yes, two ways. Helious runs an MCP server that Claude, ChatGPT and other AI tools connect to directly, and a plain web API for everything else, documented at helious.io/developers. Both hand back the same things: 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?
It is a standard way for AI assistants to use outside tools. You give your assistant one address and Helious shows up as tools it already knows how to call: the curve, the calendar, the auctions, the feed. There is no code to write, and you never scrape a page or paste a number into the chat yourself.
3. How do I connect my AI to Helious?
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. On the free sample tier it works with no account at all. There is a two-minute walkthrough at helious.io/ai.
4. What can my AI answer once connected?
Ask what the curve is doing today and your AI reads the live regime off the rates board, along with the time that regime flipped. Ask whether this morning's auction was strong and you get the tail, the bid-to-cover and the split between bidder groups, each one set against that tenor's own averages. The tail is how far above the expected yield the auction had to stop. Bid-to-cover is total bids divided by the amount sold.
CPI works the same way. You get the print, the forecast, and where the level sits in decades of its own history on the data hubs. The surprise comes in σ terms, which sizes the miss against how much that release usually misses by. For the week ahead you get the whole economic calendar with the forecasts attached, plus the FOMC meetings and the Fed speakers.
5. Does the AI get context, or just numbers?
It gets the context. An auction result arrives with the twelve-auction averages for its tenor and its rank in years of history. Yields carry a 52-week range, a percentile, and sometimes a dated note like highest close since 2007. Release levels are ranked against their own official series going back decades. The history travels with the number, so your AI can tell you whether a print matters instead of reading it back to you.
6. What does it cost?
Starting costs nothing and needs no account at all: a 1-day sample, news running an hour behind, no market prices. Sign up for a free key and you reach 7 days back. Starter is $14.99 a month, which takes the news live, reaches 12 months back and adds the US Treasury curve 60 minutes behind. Pro is $39.99 a month and every price goes live, with 24 months of history behind it. Ultimate is $99 a month for 10 years back and a live streaming WebSocket, though any plan can hold that stream delayed if you would rather. For what an institutional feed costs, see 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, so copy it before you close the page, then paste it into your AI. Upgrading a plan changes nothing here. The same key just reads further back.
8. Is it safe to connect an AI to my account?
The key only reads market data. It cannot touch your account, your billing or your settings. Helious keeps a hashed copy and nothing else, so nobody can read your key back to you, and you can revoke any key in one click. If you run more than one agent, give each one its own key and you can switch one off without stopping the rest.
9. Will my AI cite where the numbers came from?
Yes. Every answer leads with a finished sentence naming Helious and linking the page the number lives on, whether that is the Hormuz transit monitor or the latest desk notes. That means you can check any claim yourself in one click. The methodology behind every measured number is public as well.
10. Where do I start?
If you just want your assistant reading live data, start at helious.io/ai, the two-minute setup. Builders want helious.io/developers instead. That is the full interactive reference, with a try-it button on every endpoint. And if the market side is the part you want to understand first, helious.io/learn and the guides are where to go.