Trends MCP for Cline

Trends MCP is the shared read-only trend server. Cline is the VS Code agent that will call it in a loop without waiting for a click on every tool. Cline should register a remote server at https://api.trendsmcp.ai/mcp with Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY. The JSON uses url plus headers, not Windsurf’s serverUrl and not VS Code’s type: "http" workspace file (Cline has its own MCP panel). Once connected, agent mode can run get_trends, get_growth, and get_top_trends. Free plans include 100 requests per month. Starter is $19 per month. Cline is the right client when the job is a multi-step research report that should finish while the operator is in another buffer.

Remote Server fields inside the Cline panel

Open Cline in VS Code, go to the MCP Servers tab, and add a Remote Server. Paste https://api.trendsmcp.ai/mcp and the Authorization header. The equivalent JSON is:

"trends-mcp": {
  "url": "https://api.trendsmcp.ai/mcp",
  "headers": {
    "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"
  }
}

That block is not a substitute for .vscode/mcp.json. Copilot Chat reads the VS Code MCP file. Cline reads Cline’s server list. Teams that use both features register Trends MCP twice against the same account. Do not point Cline at https://www.trendsmcp.ai/mcp. That www URL is OAuth for Claude.ai Connectors only. Cline is a Bearer client on the api host.

After save, refresh the server so the three tools appear. A silent empty tool list usually means the header lost the word Bearer or the URL still has a trailing path from another product. The Connect docs show the Cline snippet beside Cursor and VS Code for that reason.

When an autonomous agent is the right caller

Cline earns its keep when the human specification is a list and a template, not a single question. Example: ten competitor brand names, three sources, two growth windows, one markdown table. Copilot Chat will pause. Cursor Agent may start editing files the brief never asked to touch. Cline can be told to write only research/trend-brief.md and stop.

Cursor is still the better host when the trend check is in service of an immediate code change in the same Agent pass. VS Code Copilot is the better host when the team wants a short chat audit trail inside a PR discussion. n8n is the better host when the same brief must run every Monday with no IDE open. Trends MCP does not change. The caller’s autonomy does.

A bad Cline job is “see what is trending in the world.” That prompt invites unbounded get_top_trends paging. A good Cline job names the feed types, the keyword file, the maximum call count, and the output path.

How to chain the three tools without lighting the quota

Cline will chain whatever the system prompt allows. A quota-safe chain is rigid. Step 1: one get_top_trends call with an exact type (TikTok Trending Hashtags, GitHub Trending Repos, Google Trends) and limit 10 or 25. Step 2: get_growth on at most five keywords, with percent_growth including 3M and 1Y in the same call so windows are free relative to request count. Step 3: get_trends on the single winner if the report must show a weekly series. REST jobs that clone this chain should use mode: "get_time_series" for step 3.

Tell Cline that extra sources multiply requests. get_growth with source as a comma-separated list is one request per source plus keyword, not one request for the whole list. A prompt that says source='all' can explode. Prefer named sources from the data sources table. Include “using TrendsMCP” in the task text so Cline does not “research” via browser scrape tools if those are also enabled.

Write a stop rule: if a tool returns not_found or data_unavailable, record the miss and continue the list instead of retrying five times. Retries count.

Guardrails that belong in the Cline task, not in the server

Trends MCP is read-only. It will not post to Slack, open issues, or edit ads. If the agent should notify a channel, that is a later Cline step or an n8n webhook, and it should run only after the JSON is already saved. Putting send-message tools in the same unconstrained loop as get_top_trends is how a noisy feed becomes a noisy customer channel.

Keep the API key out of the repo. Cline’s MCP config is local. Do not paste it into a ticket. Rotate the key if a demo recording showed the header.

Pricing is 100 requests per month on Free, 1,000 on Starter at $19, 5,000 on Pro at $49, 25,000 on Business at $199. Cline makes it easy to spend those in one enthusiastic run. Log tool calls in the markdown output (tool, source, keyword) so the next human can see why the month is half gone on Wednesday.

Limits that bite harder in agent mode than in chat

Chat users see each call. Cline users see a progress spinner. The spinner hides a 40-call get_trends fan-out. Require a budget in the task: “at most 12 Trends MCP requests.” History is weekly across about five years, so asking Cline for hourly data produces fiction or wasted retries. Feed type strings are case-sensitive. Reddit keywords omit r/. npm names are exact.

401 means the remote URL or header is wrong. 429 means the monthly cap. 400 invalid_source means the model invented a platform name. None of those is a Cline outage.

Cline is the high-autonomy VS Code client for the shared Trends MCP server. It is the wrong place for unbounded discovery and the wrong place to store the only copy of a production key.