Claude Code taps Ollama for local models

This is the kind of tutorial that matters because it breaks the link between a great coding UX and a single model provider.

• –Ollama’s docs show a straightforward setup: point `ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL` at localhost, set the auth token to `ollama`, and run Claude Code against supported models
• –The bigger story is optionality: developers keep Claude Code’s workflow while swapping in local models like `qwen3.5` or cloud-hosted open models through Ollama
• –“Free forever” is overstated, since local inference still costs hardware and power, while some Ollama cloud models are paid
• –Context window is the real constraint, not just compatibility; Ollama recommends large-context models, and smaller locals can struggle on real repos
• –For teams wary of sending proprietary code to hosted APIs, this is one of the cleanest paths yet to a mostly local agentic coding setup