Definition
Plain language
A tool that makes it easy to download and run AI models on your own machine.
As stated in the literature
A packaging and serving layer built on llama.cpp that ships its own hand-written chat templates and model manifests, which can diverge from a model's official template.
Also called: Ollama
Why it matters: Its convenience makes local model use accessible to non-experts, but because it ships its own chat templates, the same model can answer slightly differently here than it does through its official setup.
For example, someone can type a single command to pull down a model and start chatting with it on their own laptop, without setting up any of the underlying machinery.
Heard on the show
“… cpp, and ollama are five separate open-source projects, written by different teams, in different languages: a Rust …”Episode 272 — How a Model Guesses Which Engine Is Running It, From a Wrong Date