local Ollama models to show up in the OpenClaw Control UI (version 2026.4.22). | Friends of the Crustacean 🦞🤝 | Page 1

toxic pendant Apr 25, 2026, 12:20 AM

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Hey Krill, I'm having trouble getting local Ollama models to show up in the OpenClaw Control UI (version 2026.4.22).

Setup:

Ollama is running locally on 127.0.0.1:11434 serving models like qwen3.6:35b and gpt-oss:20b.
We successfully enabled the plugin (openclaw plugins enable ollama) and checked that discovery: {enabled: true} is active.

The Hangup:

The Control UI only lists venice and says "Unknown provider: ollama".
We realized the global openclaw.json was missing the ollama provider block under models.providers and the ollama:local block under auth.profiles.
The real issue: When we tried to manually edit ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json to add the Ollama provider, the config changes seem to get instantly reverted/overwritten by OpenClaw or the UI, causing the models to disappear again. We resorted to a Python script to force-inject the JSON, which felt like a hacky workaround.

Question:
What is the official, persistent way to configure and register the Ollama provider in 2026.4.x so the auto-discovery works, the UI recognizes it, and the config doesn't keep getting overwritten?

novel shellBOT Apr 25, 2026, 12:20 AM

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To help others find answers, you can mark your question as solved via Right click solution message -> Apps -> ✅ Mark Solution

light moth Apr 25, 2026, 1:18 AM

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Krill is down I think

toxic pendant Apr 25, 2026, 6:33 PM

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light moth Krill is down I think

Do you know how I can tell when Krill will be up and running again? And do you know if I would need to re-ask my question again?

light moth Apr 25, 2026, 7:37 PM

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toxic pendant Do you know how I can tell when Krill will be up and running again? And do you k...

Idk but usually the bot is offline on discord

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I think it’s online now

toxic pendant Apr 25, 2026, 8:08 PM

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light moth Idk but usually the bot is offline on discord

Thanks I will try and repost the question

toxic pendant Apr 27, 2026, 2:54 AM

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I fixed this issue with bash command "openclaw configure --section models" and follower the wizard instructions. Was set up in a couple of minutes.

spare dragonBOT Apr 27, 2026, 2:56 AM

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Nice, that’s the right fix ✅

For future readers: use the model configure wizard, not manual edits to ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json:

openclaw configure --section model

Docs use singular model; if models worked on your version, same idea.

Then pick Ollama → Local only / Cloud + Local, use:

http://127.0.0.1:11434

No /v1.

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Verify with:

openclaw models list --provider ollama

Also: for auto-discovery, don’t manually add models.providers.ollama.models unless you want a fully manual model catalog — explicit provider config can disable discovery behavior.

Docs: https://docs.openclaw.ai/providers/ollama and https://docs.openclaw.ai/cli/configure

Glad this is solved 🎉 If this fixed it, please right-click the solution message → Apps → ✅ Mark Solution so Answer Overflow indexes it.

#local Ollama models to show up in the OpenClaw Control UI (version 2026.4.22).