Node-local inference

Agents can delegate a short task to an Ollama model on a paired desktop or server node. The prompt and response cross the existing authenticated Gateway/node connection; the request runs on the node's own loopback Ollama endpoint (http://127.0.0.1:11434).

```bash
ollama pull qwen3:0.6b
ollama list
```

```bash
apus node run \
  --host <gateway-host> \
  --port 18789 \
  --display-name "Local inference"
```

Approve the device and its node commands on the Gateway host, then verify:

```bash
apus devices list
apus devices approve <deviceRequestId>
apus nodes pending
apus nodes approve <nodeRequestId>
apus nodes status --connected
```

A first connection, or an upgrade that adds Ollama commands, can trigger
node-command approval. If the node connects without advertising
`ollama.models` and `ollama.chat`, check `apus nodes pending` again.

The bundled Ollama plugin exposes the `node_inference` tool. Agents call
`action: "discover"` first, then `action: "run"` with a node and model from
that result (`run` can omit the node when exactly one capable node is
connected). For example: "Discover the Ollama models on my nodes, then use
the fastest loaded model to summarize this text."

Discovery reads /api/tags, checks /api/show capabilities, and uses /api/ps when available to rank already-loaded models first. It returns only local models Ollama reports as chat-capable (completion capability) — Ollama Cloud rows and embedding-only models are excluded. Each run disables model thinking and defaults output to 512 tokens (hard cap 8192) unless the tool call requests a different maxTokens; some models (for example GPT-OSS) do not support disabling thinking and may still emit reasoning tokens.

To keep Ollama running on a node without exposing it to agents:

apus config set plugins.entries.ollama.config.nodeInference.enabled false

Restart the node (apus node restart, or stop/rerun apus node run for a foreground session). The node stops advertising ollama.models and ollama.chat; Ollama itself and the Gateway's Ollama provider are unaffected. Set the value back to true and restart to re-enable; a changed command surface may need apus nodes pending approval again after reconnect.

Verify the node commands directly, without an agent turn:

apus nodes invoke \
  --node "Local inference" \
  --command ollama.models \
  --params '{}' \
  --invoke-timeout 90000 \
  --timeout 100000

apus nodes invoke \
  --node "Local inference" \
  --command ollama.chat \
  --params '{"model":"qwen3:0.6b","prompt":"Reply with exactly: pong","maxTokens":32,"timeoutMs":120000}' \
  --invoke-timeout 130000 \
  --timeout 140000

--invoke-timeout bounds how long the node has to run the command; --timeout bounds the overall Gateway call and should be larger.

Node-local inference always uses the node's own loopback endpoint — it does not reuse a configured remote/cloud models.providers.ollama.baseUrl. The node commands are available by default on macOS, Linux, and Windows node hosts and remain subject to normal node pairing/command policy.