Before you start
You need:- Ollama installed and running on the same machine (or a reachable one). Get it from ollama.com/download.
-
At least one model pulled locally:
- Enough RAM and disk for the model you choose. A 7B model wants ~8 GB RAM; bigger models scale from there.
Add Ollama in Rumus
1
Make sure Ollama is running
By default Ollama listens on You should get JSON listing the models you’ve pulled.
http://localhost:11434. Verify with:2
Open the model settings
Go to Settings → AI → Models and click Add Model.
3
Pick the provider
Set Provider to Ollama. There’s no API key field — Ollama is unauthenticated by default.
4
Base URL
Default
http://localhost:11434 works for local Ollama. Override if you’ve set OLLAMA_HOST to bind to another port, or if Ollama is running on another machine on your LAN.5
Enter the model ID
Type the exact model tag you pulled (e.g.
llama3.2, qwen2.5-coder:32b, mistral). Rumus does not auto-fetch the list — model IDs come straight from ollama list.6
Capabilities
On the Capabilities tab, mark only what your chosen model actually supports:
- Tool Calling — only some models (e.g. Llama 3.1+, Qwen 2.5) handle tools well.
- Vision — only multimodal variants (e.g.
llava,qwen2.5-vl). - Prompt Cache — Ollama doesn’t support an explicit prompt cache API; leave this off.
7
Save
The model appears in the picker under Custom Models.
Recommended models for Rumus
Rumus benefits from models that are good at tool use and code. Solid local choices:
For the full catalog see ollama.com/library.
Tips
- Keep a model warm. First-token latency on a cold model can be many seconds while Ollama loads weights into memory. Hit it with a quick prompt right before a session.
- Reachability across the LAN. Set
OLLAMA_HOST=0.0.0.0:11434on the Ollama host and point Rumus athttp://<host-ip>:11434. Make sure the firewall allows it. - Tool calling quality varies wildly. If the agent stops mid-task or fails to invoke a tool, fall back to a model with documented tool-use support.
- Quantization matters. A 7B model at Q4 quant runs on far less RAM than the FP16 version with little quality loss — pick the tag that fits your hardware.
Troubleshooting
Connection refused / no response
Connection refused / no response
Ollama isn’t running, or it’s bound to a different host/port. Run
ollama serve (or restart the app) and verify with curl http://localhost:11434/api/tags.404 model not found
404 model not found
The model ID doesn’t match anything in
ollama list. Either pull it (ollama pull <name>) or correct the ID — tags are case-sensitive and include the size suffix (e.g. qwen2.5-coder:32b, not just qwen2.5-coder).Very slow generation
Very slow generation
Either the model is too large for available RAM (Ollama is offloading to disk), or there’s no GPU acceleration. Try a smaller model or a more aggressive quant.
Tool calls don't work
Tool calls don't work
The model doesn’t support tools well. Switch to a model with documented tool support like Llama 3.1+ or Qwen 2.5.
Hit a snag we didn’t cover? Ask in the Rumus community.
Next steps
Other providers
Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Z.AI, DeepSeek, Kimi, OpenAI-compatible.
OpenAI-compatible
For vLLM, LiteLLM, and other local servers that speak OpenAI’s API.