Create a model using Modelfile #664

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1. jhaveri-bhavya commented on Sep 6, 2026

   

   jhaveri-bhavya

   on Sep 6, 2026

   More actions

   Posting this here for reference, since a few issues (#430, #431, this one) circle back to the same confusion and the examples/create.py in the repo only shows a tiny slice of it. I ran into the same thing. The short version: modelfile= was removed in #430 (instead create() now takes the Modelfile apart into separate arguments, one per directive) The example in examples/create.py is pretty minimal (just from_ + system).

   The mapping is basically:

   • FROM → from_
   • SYSTEM → system
   • TEMPLATE → template
   • PARAMETER → parameters (as a dict)
   • LICENSE → license
   • MESSAGE → messages

   So instead of writing a Modelfile like this:

   FROM gemma3
   SYSTEM You are Mario from Super Mario Bros.
   TEMPLATE "{{ .System }} {{ .Prompt }}"
   PARAMETER temperature 0.6
   PARAMETER stop <end_of_turn>
   MESSAGE user Who are you?
   MESSAGE assistant It's-a me, Mario!
   LICENSE MIT
   

   one can write:

   from ollama import Client
   
   client = Client()
   response = client.create(
       model='my-assistant',
       from_='gemma3',
       system='You are Mario from Super Mario Bros.',
       template='{{ .System }} {{ .Prompt }}',
       parameters={'temperature': 0.6, 'stop': ['<end_of_turn>']},
       messages=[
           {'role': 'user', 'content': 'Who are you?'},
           {'role': 'assistant', 'content': "It's-a me, Mario!"},
       ],
       license='MIT',
       stream=False,
   )
   print(response.status)  # 'success'

   Running ollama show my-assistant --modelfile afterwards shows every directive applied.
   And for the GGUF-import case (more relevant to #431): create() takes blob digests rather than file paths, so upload the file first with create_blob() and pass the digest through files=:

   client.create(
       model='my-gguf-model',
       files={'model.gguf': client.create_blob('path/to/model.gguf')},
       stream=False,
   )

   Might be worth expanding examples/create.py to cover more.
2. jhaveri-bhavya

   added a commit that references this issue on Sep 17, 2026

   examples: show full Modelfile surface in create.py, add create-gguf.py

   ...

   8f13b47