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Ollama runs large language models locally on your own machine. It’s the right pick for privacy-sensitive workloads, offline development, and zero-cost experimentation.

Installation

Install Ollama from ollama.ai, then install Swarms:
Pull a model:

Environment Setup

No API key required. Ollama runs entirely on your machine. By default it listens on http://localhost:11434. If you’re running Ollama on a different host:

Quick Start

Every Ollama model uses the ollama/ prefix:

Model Names

Any model you have pulled in Ollama is usable. Common choices: Run ollama list to see what you have installed locally.

Tool Use

Modern Ollama models (Llama 3+, Qwen 2.5+) support function calling:

Streaming

Streaming works the same as any other provider:

Privacy-First Workflows

Because nothing leaves your machine, Ollama is ideal for processing sensitive data:

Multi-Agent on Local Hardware

You can run multi-agent setups entirely locally — useful for offline R&D:

Performance Tips

  • Use quantized modelsollama/llama3.3:8b-instruct-q4_K_M runs much faster than the full-precision version on consumer hardware.
  • Set context_length honestly — local models have small effective context windows. 8192 or 16384 is realistic for most setups.
  • One agent at a time on a single GPU — concurrent agents on the same machine will queue at the inference engine.

Production Defaults

Next Steps