mcp-ollama

MCP server wrapping local Ollama models for offload from API-priced orchestrators.

Exposes 9 tools that pass work to a local model (text generation, summarisation, code tasks, mechanical transforms, commit/PR/changelog drafting). The orchestrator decides what to route locally; this server does the routing.

• Transport: stdio
• Runtime: Node 18+
• Default model: hermes3:8b (override via OLLAMA_MODEL)
• Ollama host: http://localhost:11434 (override via OLLAMA_HOST)
• License: Apache-2.0

Install

npm install
npm run build

You also need a running Ollama instance with at least one model pulled:

ollama pull hermes3:8b
ollama pull qwen2.5-coder:32b  # optional, for local_code

Run (stdio)

node dist/index.js

Configure Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport stdio ollama -- node /absolute/path/to/mcp-ollama/dist/index.js

Or in ~/.claude/settings.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ollama": {
      "transport": "stdio",
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/mcp-ollama/dist/index.js"],
      "env": {
        "OLLAMA_HOST": "http://localhost:11434",
        "OLLAMA_MODEL": "hermes3:8b"
      }
    }
  }
}

Tools

Tool	Purpose
local_generate	General-purpose generation with system + user prompt
local_summarize	Summarise a blob of text
local_analyze	Analyse text against a specific question
local_draft	Draft content in a given style
local_code	Code tasks: docstring / test / explain / review / types / refactor-suggest
local_diff	Diff-driven tasks: commit-message / pr-description / changelog / summary / impact
local_transform	Mechanical code transformations
local_models	List models available on the local Ollama host
local_pull	Pull a model onto the local Ollama host

Full tool schemas are exposed over MCP introspection.

Environment variables

Variable	Default	Purpose
OLLAMA_HOST	http://localhost:11434	Ollama HTTP endpoint
OLLAMA_MODEL	hermes3:8b	Default model when a tool call omits model

Why

Orchestrators priced by the token (Claude Code, Cursor, the Anthropic API) pay for every classification, every docstring, every commit message. Most of that work doesn't need Opus or GPT-5. Routed to Ollama on the same machine, the same work is free and faster. mcp-ollama is the routing surface.

Part of ALTER

mcp-ollama is maintained by ALTER as part of the identity infrastructure for the AI economy. The ALTER identity MCP server is hosted at mcp.truealter.com.