Create a model using Modelfile

[qomhmd]

Similar to #430, it seems the Client().create() method does not accept some modelfile argument for model creation. The example code provided in examples' readme does not actually use a Modelfil.

[jhaveri-bhavya]

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.