Ollama

Ollama runs open models on your own hardware and then gets out of the way. One command pulls a model and starts a conversation, and the same daemon exposes an HTTP endpoint the rest of your tooling can point at, so local inference no longer starts with a compiler.

The project builds on llama.cpp for its backend. Installers cover macOS, Windows and Linux, and an official Docker image is published for server deployments.

What arrives with the install is more than a chat prompt.

• Model library: a hosted catalog of open models, pulled and run by name.
• REST API: a chat endpoint on localhost port 11434, with every route documented.
• Python and JavaScript clients: official packages wrap the same API in a few lines.
• Agent launching: one subcommand starts Claude Code, Codex, Copilot CLI, Droid or OpenCode against local models.
• Assistant mode: launching OpenClaw turns Ollama into a personal assistant reachable from WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack and Discord.

Documentation covers the CLI, the API, importing your own models and the Modelfile format, and building from source is supported. A long community list of integrations, from web chat interfaces to desktop clients, means most front ends already speak to it. It suits anyone who wants models to stay on their own machine without giving up the API shape their code already expects.