Glossary

Ollama

A local LLM runtime for macOS, Linux, and Windows. The default backend for Mac Note Taker's on-device AI summaries.

Ollama is an open-source tool that packages popular open-weight LLMs (Llama 3.2, Qwen 2.5, Phi-3.5, Mistral, Gemma) into a single command-line install that exposes an OpenAI-compatible REST API on localhost:11434. It handles model download, quantization, GPU offload, and prompt-template management transparently.

Mac Note Taker's AI Assistant ships Ollama as the default provider because it preserves the local-first guarantee end-to-end: audio stays on the Mac, transcription stays on the Mac, and the LLM step that produces summaries and action items also stays on the Mac. On an M3 Pro, qwen2.5:7b-instruct returns a 5-bullet summary of a 30-minute meeting in 8-15 seconds.

Related terms

  • LLM (Large Language Model)A transformer-based text-generation model. Used in Mac Note Taker for summaries, action-item extraction, and speaker rename suggestions.
  • OpenAI-compatible endpointAny HTTP API that mimics OpenAI's /v1/chat/completions shape, allowing one client to talk to many backends with no code change.
  • On-deviceProcessing that happens entirely on the user's hardware - no cloud, no network round-trip, no third-party data processor.
Ollama - what it means on a Mac · Mac Note Taker