elelem-ollama

elelem-ollama connects elelem to Ollama. It registers the ollama provider, which talks to Ollama’s own /api/chat endpoint. Use it to run open models on your machine, or on another machine on your network, with Ollama managing downloads and GPU memory.

Install #

gem install elelem elelem-builtins elelem-ollama

elelem-builtins is optional but gives the agent its default tools. Requires Ruby 4.0. Install Ollama separately and pull a model that supports tool calls:

ollama pull gpt-oss

Configure #

With Ollama on localhost:11434 and gpt-oss:latest pulled, there is nothing to set. Otherwise:

export OLLAMA_HOST=gpu-box.local:11434
export OLLAMA_MODEL=qwen3:32b

OLLAMA_HOST may include a scheme, so https://ollama.example.com works. --model overrides OLLAMA_MODEL.

OLLAMA_THINK and OLLAMA_KEEP_ALIVE are passed to Ollama as strings, unchanged. Ollama decides what values it accepts; for think, models such as gpt-oss take low, medium, or high.

Use #

elelem -p ollama
elelem -p ollama --model qwen3:32b
OLLAMA_THINK=high elelem -p ollama

The gem also installs elelem-ollama, which is elelem with ollama as the default provider:

elelem-ollama chat

Unlike elelem, elelem-ollama does not load elelem-builtins, so the agent has no tools unless a plugin file in ~/.agents/plugins adds them.

How it works #

Each turn is one POST to /api/chat with stream: true, made with Net::HTTP. The read timeout is 3600 seconds and the open timeout is 10. Empty or unset fields (tools, think, keep_alive, options) are left out of the request, so with defaults the body holds only model, messages, and stream.

Ollama identifies tool results by tool name rather than call ID. The provider rewrites the history to match: assistant tool calls become {function: {name, arguments}}, and each tool result gets the matching tool_name in place of tool_call_id.

Ollama streams newline-delimited JSON. Each line’s message.content adds to the reply and message.thinking is printed as thinking. Tool calls arrive whole, with arguments already parsed. elelem prints thinking as it arrives and the reply once the turn is done.

Limitations #

• The provider accepts options (such as temperature or num_ctx) and extra request fields in Ruby, but nothing sets them from the command line or environment. Configure those in the Ollama model instead.
• Any non-2xx response raises HTTP CODE: BODY. There are no retries.
• Tool calls depend on the model. Pick one that Ollama lists with tool support.

Development #

git clone https://git.mokhan.ca/elelem/ollama.git
cd ollama
bin/setup
bin/test
bin/lint

The spec injects a fake HTTP adapter, so the tests make no network calls.

Environment #