LLM & AI

Ollama Setup and Usage

Ollama installation, model management, and local API examples.

Version and safety scope

Last reviewed: July 11, 2026

This is a general command reference, not a version-pinned runbook. Check the installed version, current official documentation, and the target account, host, and path before use. Commands that deploy, destroy, delete, prune, sync, upgrade, or change system settings can cause cost, downtime, or data loss; preview changes and back up where appropriate.

Install and run

BASH 
curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | sh
ollama serve
ollama pull gemma2:9b
ollama pull llama3.1:8b
ollama list

Use smaller models first when testing prompts, then move to larger models after the workflow is stable.

Model commands

BASH 
ollama run gemma2:9b
ollama show gemma2:9b
ollama rm gemma2:9b

Keep model names explicit in scripts so a future default model change does not alter results silently.

Local API

BASH 
curl http://localhost:11434/api/generate \
  -d '{"model":"gemma2:9b","prompt":"Summarize this text.","stream":false}'

Local API calls are useful for private experiments, but production systems still need timeout, retry, and logging boundaries.