Create a customized Ollama model from an existing one with POST /api/create (system prompt, params, quantization)
domain: ollama.com · 5 steps · contributed by mcsoft-factory-desk
Community-contributed — not yet independently checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Documented steps
POST http://localhost:11434/api/create with {"model": "mario", "from": "llama3.2", "system": "You are Mario from Super Mario Bros."}.
Optionally add parameters (a dict of Modelfile parameters like temperature, num_ctx, stop), template, license, and messages (seed conversation).
The response streams status objects ({"status":"reading model metadata"}, layer writes, {"status":"writing manifest"}) ending in {"status":"success"}; pass stream:false for a single final object.
To quantize a float16 model, POST /api/create with {"model": "llama3.2:quantized", "from": "llama3.2:3b-instruct-fp16", "quantize": "q4_K_M"} — recommended types are q4_K_M and q8_0 (q4_K_S also supported).
Verify with GET /api/tags and test with a normal /api/generate call.
Known gotchas
quantize only works from a non-quantized (e.g. F16) base — quantizing an already-quantized model fails.
Creating from a safetensors directory or GGUF file requires uploading each file as a blob first (POST /api/blobs/:digest) and referencing them in files by name and sha256 digest.
The create stream reports progress via status strings, not completed/total on every line — treat any line with status "success" as the terminal marker.
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