Ollama lets developers run open-source models locally across macOS, Windows, Linux, and Docker. A quick install command starts the CLI so you can immediately run models like Gemma 3 with ollama run gemma31. This local approach removes reliance on cloud providers and enables custom workflows defined in Modelfiles1.
Its library offers hundreds of prebuilt models with simple pull commands to try different capabilities2. Structured outputs can constrain models to JSON schemas for reliable parsing3. Official docs detail how to compile from source and run GPU-accelerated containers for consistent performance on varied hardware45.