LocalChat

A fully offline, chatbot interface for your local Ollama models. No cloud. No telemetry. No backend server. Runs entirely in your browser.

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Features

• Real-time streaming responses from any Ollama model
• Sidebar with grouped chat history (Today / Yesterday / Last 7 days / Older)
• Rename and delete chats
• Switch models mid-chat via a dropdown in the header
• Markdown rendering with syntax-highlighted code blocks
• Copy button on code blocks and messages
• Dark / light theme toggle
• All chat history persisted in localStorage (survives refreshes)
• Clear chat without losing the session
• Zero backend: talks directly to Ollama via a Vite proxy

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Prerequisites

1. Ollama must be installed and running.

   • Install: https://ollama.com or curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | sh

   • Start: ollama serve (or it may already be running as a systemd service)

2. Node.js 18+ and npm.

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Setup

# Clone or copy the project
cd ~/projects  # wherever you keep things

# Install dependencies (one-time)
cd ollama

npm install

npm run dev

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Run

python3 run.py

Open http://localhost:5176 in your browser.

The Vite dev server proxies all /ollama/* requests to (example) http://127.0.0.1:5176, so you do not need to configure any CORS settings in Ollama.

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Current Models examples (Cmd: ollama list)

ministral-3:8b    6.0 GB
qwen2.5:3b        1.9 GB
gemma4:e4b        9.6 GB
phi4:latest       9.1 GB
llama3.1:latest   4.9 GB

All of these will appear automatically in the model dropdown once Ollama is running.

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Adding New Models

ollama pull mistral

ollama pull codellama

ollama pull deepseek-coder-v2

Refresh the browser tab after pulling. The new model appears in the dropdown immediately.

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Build for Production

If you want to serve the app as a static build (e.g. with nginx):

npm run build

npm run preview   # serves the built app on port 5173, still with the Ollama proxy

For a proper production nginx setup, you would proxy /ollama/ to http://127.0.0.1:5176/ in your nginx config.

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Data Storage

All chat sessions are stored in your browser's localStorage under the key localchat-v1. No files are written to disk by the app itself.

To export or back up chats, open DevTools → Application → Local Storage → localchat-v1 and copy the JSON value.

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Troubleshooting

"Could not connect to Ollama"

• Run ollama serve in a terminal.

• Check ss -tlnp | grep 5176 to confirm it is listening.

Model not appearing in the dropdown

• Run ollama list to verify it is downloaded.

• Refresh the browser tab.

Slow responses

• This is normal for large models (phi4, gemma4, etc) on CPU.

• Use qwen2.5:3b for fast responses on lighter hardware.

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Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
UI framework	React 18 + TypeScript + Vite
Styling	Tailwind CSS
State / store	Zustand (persisted to localStorage)
Markdown	react-markdown + remark-gfm
Highlighting	rehype-highlight + highlight.js
Icons	lucide-react
LLM backend	Ollama (local, via Vite proxy)
Fonts	DM Sans + JetBrains Mono (Google Fonts)

License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE.