Ollama models

2026-08-31

If you already pulled models with Ollama, Tempo9 can run them where they sit — no download, no copy, no conversion.

tempo9 --list-ollama

qwen3:8b            4.68 GiB  /Users/you/.ollama/models/blobs/sha256-1f3d...
llama3.2:latest     1.88 GiB  /Users/you/.ollama/models/blobs/sha256-a41c...

tempo9 --ollama qwen3:8b

A bare name means :latest, the same as ollama run. If you moved the store, OLLAMA_MODELS is respected.

Ollama does not need to be running. This is not a protocol; nothing talks to the Ollama process. It is a read of its files.

How it works

Ollama has no model format of its own. It stores plain GGUF wrapped in an OCI-style content-addressed layout for deduplication and versioning:

~/.ollama/models/
├── manifests/registry.ollama.ai/library/qwen3/8b   small JSON — the path IS the name
└── blobs/sha256-1f3d...                            bare GGUF — the weights

The manifest lists layers:

{"schemaVersion":2,"layers":[
  {"mediaType":"application/vnd.ollama.image.model",   "digest":"sha256:1f3d…","size":4831838208},
  {"mediaType":"application/vnd.ollama.image.template","digest":"sha256:a7c1…","size":1482}
]}

The weights are the .model layer. Its digest sha256:1f3d… names the file blobs/sha256-1f3d… — colon becomes dash. That blob is byte-identical to the GGUF you would download yourself, and Tempo9 loads GGUF, so it simply opens it.

registry.ollama.ai/library is implicit in Ollama's display convention, so that manifest shows as qwen3:8b. Models from elsewhere keep their full host/namespace/model:tag name, and still answer to the short form.

What is deliberately not used

The manifest also carries template and params layers. Tempo9 ignores them and uses the chat template embedded in the GGUF — the one the model author shipped.

Ollama's template layer is written in Go's text/template; ours is Jinja. Honouring theirs would mean implementing a second template engine to obtain a transcription of something we already have in the original.

Tempo9 creates one file, in its own cache, never in Ollama's store:

~/.cache/tempo9/ollama/qwen3-8b.gguf -> ~/.ollama/models/blobs/sha256-1f3d...

The engine currently decides GGUF-vs-graph by the file extension, and Ollama's blobs have none. Handed a blob path directly it refuses, and it refuses silently. The link works around that, and gives the engine's graph cache a legible key besides — that cache is keyed on basename, size and mtime, and qwen3-8b.gguf identifies itself where a digest would not.

A link left pointing at a blob that a re-pull replaced is detected and rewritten, so a re-pulled tag never serves last week's weights.

What it will not do