ollama-mcp-server

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that lets Claude Code delegate sub-tasks to a local Ollama model instead of doing the work itself. The goal: keep heavy, mechanical, or bulk work off your Claude usage quota (5h / weekly limits) by routing it to a free local (or Ollama cloud) model, so Claude's own tokens are spent only on the work that actually needs Claude-level reasoning.

What it does today

• Single file: src/index.ts.

• Exposes one MCP tool, run_ollama_task, which:

  • Takes prompt, an optional system_prompt, and model (default qwen2.5-coder:latest).

  • POSTs to http://localhost:11434/api/generate (non-streaming) and returns the full response text to Claude.

• Runs via npm start → tsx src/index.ts, communicating over stdio (the standard way Claude Code talks to local MCP servers).

That's it — no build step, no config file, no model listing, no cloud routing logic yet. It's a minimal working bridge, not a finished tool.

Related MCP server: Ollama MCP Server

Current state / things worth fixing

These are observations, not changes I've made (you asked for no code edits):

1. Default model doesn't exist on this machine. The code defaults to qwen2.5-coder:latest, but ollama list here only shows qwen3.5:4b. Any call that doesn't explicitly pass model will fail. Either pull qwen2.5-coder, or change the default to a model you actually have.

2. No Ollama host config. The endpoint is hardcoded to http://localhost:11434. There's no OLLAMA_HOST env var support, so this can't point at a remote box or a different port without editing code.

3. "Cloud" is mentioned but not implemented. The tool description says "local or cloud Ollama models," but the code only ever calls localhost. Ollama's cloud models (via ollama signin + cloud-tagged models like *-cloud) aren't wired up — there's no way to pick or fall back to them.

4. No timeout. The axios call has no timeout, so a stuck/huge generation can hang indefinitely with no way for Claude to recover.

5. Uses /api/generate, not /api/chat. That means no multi-turn context and no structured message roles — every call is a single stateless prompt. Fine for one-shot delegation, less fine for anything needing back-and-forth.

6. No model discovery. Claude has no way to ask "what models are available locally right now" — it just has to guess or be told. A list_ollama_models tool (wrapping ollama list / /api/tags) would let Claude pick a sensible model instead of relying on a hardcoded default.

7. No tsconfig.json. Works today because tsx doesn't strictly need one, but there's no strict mode, no target/module config pinned down — easy to drift.

8. package.json has boilerplate defaults — empty author, ISC license, a test script that just errors out, no build/bin entry for distributing this as an installable MCP server.

What "best output" would need

For this to actually move the needle on your Claude quota, two things matter more than the code:

A. Claude needs to know when to delegate. The server just exposes a tool — nothing tells Claude to prefer it. That instruction lives in CLAUDE.md in this repo (and ideally in your global ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md if you want it to apply everywhere). Without that guidance, Claude will keep doing heavy work inline and this MCP server will sit unused.

B. The model needs to fit the task. A single hardcoded default (qwen2.5-coder, and even that's missing here) means every delegated task — whether it's "summarize this 2000-line log" or "write boilerplate CRUD code" — goes to the same model. Worth having a couple of pulled models for different jobs (a coder model, a general-purpose one) and letting Claude pass model explicitly based on the task, once it knows what's available (see point 6 above).

Concretely, the highest-leverage next steps, in order:

1. Fix the default model mismatch (pull qwen2.5-coder or change the default).

2. Add a list_ollama_models tool so Claude can check what's actually available before delegating.

3. Add OLLAMA_HOST env support so this isn't locked to localhost.

4. Add a timeout + streaming option so large tasks don't hang silently.

5. Write the delegation policy into CLAUDE.md (done — see that file) so Claude actually uses this instead of burning its own tokens.

Setup

npm install
ollama serve          # if not already running
npm start              # starts the MCP server over stdio

Register it with Claude Code as a local MCP server (e.g. in your Claude Code MCP config) pointing at npm start (or tsx src/index.ts) in this directory.