Models and assignments

Curator runs every AI feature on local models through Ollama. Instead of one model doing everything, Curator assigns a model to each task. You can change any assignment in Settings under AI & Models.

The six tasks

Task	What it powers
Vision / Analysis	Reads images and scanned PDFs so their content becomes searchable.
OCR	Pulls text out of scanned documents and images.
Embeddings	Turns text into meaning, which powers search by meaning and the documents chat draws from.
Chat	Answers your questions and cites the files it used.
File Processing	Writes the AI description, category, and other metadata for each file.
Organization	Groups files into clusters on the Organize screen.

Pulling models

Models are downloaded, or pulled, through Ollama. Curator can pull its recommended models straight from Settings under AI & Models.

Recommendations are sized to your Mac’s RAM. Onboarding reads your memory and suggests models that fit, with a warning when a model may be too large. Larger models are more capable but use more memory, and processing more files at once uses more still.

[!NOTE] PLACEHOLDER: the exact recommended model names and their download sizes per task are not pinned here yet. Fill in the confirmed defaults (for example the default Chat, Embeddings, and Vision models and their sizes) once they are decided.

The Ollama connection

Curator talks to Ollama at a single address, the Ollama Base URL. The default is http://localhost:11434, which is Ollama running on the same Mac. You can point it at Ollama on another computer on your network instead.

The connection test in Settings shows one of four states.

Badge	Meaning
Not tested	You have not run the test yet.
Testing	The test is in progress.
Connected	Curator reached Ollama and AI features are available.
Offline	Curator could not reach Ollama. AI features stay off until it can.

To understand what Ollama is and why Curator depends on it, read Ollama and models.