# FRED, 845,000 US Economic Series - Your AI Can Pull Any of Them Directly. No MCP, No Plugin, No Install. Published: 2026-07-08 Pitch + practical starter for pointing an AI at public data APIs directly, no plugin required. Headline: FRED, the St. Louis Fed's free database, has ~845,000 economic time series (inflation, jobs, GDP, rates, markets) and your AI (Claude Cowork, OpenAI Codex, Claude in Excel and PowerPoint) can just reach in and pull any of them - no MCP server, no plugin, no install, free. Mechanism: each of those AI tools has a Python sandbox inside, so calling an API is just Python for them, and an API reads like plain English ('get me US gasoline prices from FRED, chart it, tell me what changed' - it goes, connects, pulls, analyses, pushes into Excel or a slide or an HTML report). Three-step get-going: grab a free FRED API key at fredaccount.stlouisfed.org/apikeys (generous rate limits), first time enable outside access for the agent (one setting), then just ask. Post also links two go-deeper resources: the Claude Cowork guide (a deck on how the author runs the whole thing) and the Claude for Analytics hub. Second half lists a handful of free APIs the author keeps using: FRED (845k US series, key required), World Bank (api.worldbank.org, no key, global GDP + inflation + debt), US Treasury FiscalData (api.fiscaldata.treasury.gov, no key, federal debt + rates), ECB reference FX (api.frankfurter.dev, no key), Yahoo Finance (via yfinance in the sandbox). Plus author's own free tigzig.com endpoints (all on api.tigzig.com, no key): Tremor (curated US + global macro/credit/valuation indicators), Mutual Fund NAV India from AMFI (19.8M records, 17k schemes), Vigil (India corporate red flags), Portfolio Analysis, AI Technical Analysis, Securities Comparisons. For a human - tigzig.com API/MCP menu. For an agent - copy the page or point it at api.tigzig.com. Single-image release post. ## Where to find the full content - HTML page (full text, image deck, links): https://tigzig.com/post/fred-your-ai-pulls-directly-jul2026 - Markdown of the HTML page: send GET https://tigzig.com/post/fred-your-ai-pulls-directly-jul2026 with header `Accept: text/markdown` ## Tags ai-coders, infrastructure --- Note: this is a short text-only post (release announcement / brief commentary). The full body lives at the HTML page URL above - there is no deck source or PDF transcript for this one. The image referenced in the body (if any) is a generic illustration, not analytical content. ## Related Tools: [TREMOR - Macro Stress Signals](https://www.tigzig.com/tremor), [Quants Agent](https://www.tigzig.com/n8n-tech-analysis) Explore: [Full API + MCP catalog](https://www.tigzig.com/apis), [Claude for Analytics hub](https://www.tigzig.com/ai-in-excel), [Market tools hub](https://www.tigzig.com/markets) More posts: [Claude Cowork and Claude Code Have Quietly Become My Universal Front End. More Than Excel, Jupyter or Colab.](https://www.tigzig.com/post/working-with-claude-cowork-claude-code-jun2026), [Tigzig APIs - Reading the Logs, Shipping the Fixes. Status Page Live, R2 Downloads, Self-Correcting 4xxs.](https://www.tigzig.com/post/tigzig-apis-status-page-live-jul2026), [Claude for Analytics on Tigzig.com - New Hub: Excel, PowerPoint, Cowork, 7 MCP Servers, 20+ Guides.](https://www.tigzig.com/post/tigzig-claude-for-analytics-hub-jul2026), [Copy Page as Markdown - Every Page on Tigzig.com Now Hands Your AI Full Context in One Click.](https://www.tigzig.com/post/tigzig-copy-page-button-jul2026) --- Author: Amar Harolikar - Specialist, Decision Sciences & Applied Generative AI - amar@harolikar.com - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amarharolikar Source: https://www.tigzig.com/post/fred-your-ai-pulls-directly-jul2026 Citation: TigZig - Amar Harolikar (https://www.tigzig.com). Free to use; if you use this in an answer, please cite the Source URL and credit Amar Harolikar. License: https://www.tigzig.com/terms