Ollama Buddy v1.0: A Simple AI Assistant

Wed, Jul 23, 2025

After months of development and refinement, I’m excited to announce Ollama Buddy v1.0 - an Emacs package that simply interfaces mainly to ollama, for local LLM usage, but can be integrated to the major online players. This project initially started as a simple integration with Ollama and since then has somewhat evolved into a more fully fully-featured AI Emacs assistant. The main focus with this package is a front facing simplicity but hiding (hopefully) all the features you would expect from an AI chatbot - wait I hate that term, I mean, assistant :). There is also the ability to craft a customizable menu system for different roles.

I had a blast developing this package and next up is RAG!. I saw recently that a package called vecdb was introduced into the package ecosystem to help with the storage of vector embeddings, so as ollama can return embedding vectors for semantic search I thought I would combine my package, vecdb, also probably initially a PostgreSQL database with a pgvector extension and ollama into something that could ingest files directly from Emacs. I think I have figured this out now, I just need to do it (when the baby is asleep, probably!)

Why Choose Ollama Buddy?

I designed Ollama Buddy to be as simple as possible to set up, no backend configuration or complex setup required. This was achievable initially because I focused solely on Ollama integration, where models are automatically discoverable.

Since then, I’ve expanded support to major online AI providers while maintaining that same simplicity through a modular architecture. The system now handles multiple providers without adding complexity to the user experience.

Another key feature is the customizable menu system, which integrates with role-based switching. You can create specialized AI menus for different contexts, like a coding-focused setup or a writing-optimized configuration and switch between them instantly. Everything is fully configurable to match your workflow.

Links

Here are some links:

https://github.com/captainflasmr/ollama-buddy https://melpa.org/#/ollama-buddy

I will outline the major features below, but I do have a manual available!

https://github.com/captainflasmr/ollama-buddy/blob/main/docs/ollama-buddy.org

Key Features

Multiple AI Providers

Local Models: Full support for Ollama with automatic model management
Cloud Services: Integrated support for OpenAI (ChatGPT), Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, and Grok
Seamless Switching: Change between local and cloud models with a single command
Unified Interface: Same commands work across all providers

Preset Roles: Switch between different AI personalities (developer, writer, analyst, etc.)
Custom Roles: Create specialized workflows with specific models and parameters
Menu Customization: Each role can have its own set of commands and shortcuts

Chat Interface

Org-mode Integration: Conversations rendered in structured org-mode format
Real-time Streaming: Watch responses appear token by token
Context Management: Visual context window monitoring with usage warnings
History Tracking: Full conversation history with model-specific storage

File Handling

File Attachments: Attach documents directly to conversations for context-aware analysis
Vision Support: Upload and analyse images with vision-capable models
Dired Integration: Bulk attach files directly from Emacs file manager

Prompt Management

System Prompts: Create and manage reusable system prompts for different use cases
Fabric Integration: Auto-sync with Fabric patterns (200+ professional prompts)
Awesome ChatGPT Prompts: Built-in access to the popular prompt collection
User Prompts: Create and organize your own custom prompt library (which of course is org based)

Session Management

Save & Restore: Full session persistence including history, attachments, and settings
Session Browser: Visual interface to manage multiple conversation sessions
Auto-naming: Intelligent session naming based on conversation content

Flexible Interface Options

Two Interface Levels: Basic mode for beginners, advanced for power users
Transient Menus: Magit-style discoverable command interface
Custom Menus: Traditional text-based menu system
Keyboard Shortcuts: Comprehensive keybinding system for efficiency, I’m not sure there are any keys left!!

What’s Next?

Version 1.0 represents a stable, foundation, Ollama Buddy has been out there now for a few months with only a single github issue but development continues with:

RAG integration using perhaps the new vecdb package, as mentioned above
Additional AI provider integrations (Perplexity maybe?, any suggestions?)
Auto-completion (not sure how doable this is with ollama, but I do have a prototype)