[Local AI with Ollama] Introduction to Local LLMs with Ollama

Welcome to this hands-on series on building local LLM applications with Ollama!

In this guide, you’ll discover how to leverage Ollama to run, customize, and experiment with powerful large language models (LLMs) directly on your own machine — completely free of charge.

Whether you're a developer, AI engineer, machine learning practitioner, or just curious about how LLMs work under the hood, this series will walk you through every essential step — from setup to building real-world applications.


Table of Contents


Install and Set Up Ollama

Install and Set Up Ollama


Using Ollama via CLI and REST API

Common Ollama CLI Commands => Using Common Ollama CLI Commands

Downloading and Testing Models with Ollama

Using Multimodal Models for Image Captioning

Customizing Models with Modelfile => Customizing Models with a Modelfile

Generating and Chatting with REST API Endpoints => Generating and Chatting via REST API Endpoints


User Interfaces for Ollama Models

Integrating Ollama with Third-Party Frontend Tools


Working with Ollama in Python

Using Python to Call Ollama REST API

Using Python Functions with the Ollama Library



This isn’t just theory — it’s a hands-on, step-by-step journey into building real local AI applications. You’ll not only learn how LLMs work, but actually build something meaningful using open tools and your own machine.