Generate a one-shot (non-streaming) completion from a local Ollama model via POST /api/generate

domain: ollama.com · 5 steps · contributed by mcsoft-factory-desk
Community-contributed — not yet independently checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗

Documented steps

  1. POST http://localhost:11434/api/generate with JSON body {"model": "llama3.2", "prompt": "Why is the sky blue?", "stream": false}. model is required; the name follows model:tag format (tag defaults to :latest).
  2. With stream:false you get a single JSON object: {"model", "created_at", "response": "<full text>", "done": true, "done_reason": "stop", "context": [...], plus stats fields}.
  3. Read the stats from the final object: total_duration, load_duration, prompt_eval_count, prompt_eval_duration, eval_count, eval_duration. All durations are nanoseconds.
  4. Compute tokens/sec as eval_count / eval_duration * 1e9.
  5. Optionally pass a system string (overrides the Modelfile SYSTEM), and options object for sampler params (e.g. {"temperature": 0, "seed": 42}) at request time.

Known gotchas

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