Scripting Local Language Models with Ollama and the Vercel AI SDK

While command-line chats with local AI models are useful, the real power comes from scripting. This lesson walks you through the initial setup for creating powerful, local AI-driven scripts by combining Ollama, the Vercel AI SDK, and Zod.

You'll learn how to take a natural language command, like "Concatenate all of the markdown files in my Downloads folder into a single file," and use the generateObject function to intelligently extract structured, actionable data from it.

Workflow demonstrated in this lesson:

• Install and set up the ollama-ai-provider, ai, and zod packages.
• Create a local AI model instance using Ollama and the Gemma 3 model.
• Define a Zod schema to specify the exact data structure you want to extract (e.g., { command: string }).
• Use generateObject to pass a natural language prompt to the local model and receive a structured JSON object that matches your schema.
• Run the script using bun to see the local model successfully infer the "concatenate" command from a full sentence.

This foundational lesson unlocks the ability to build sophisticated, automated workflows by translating human language into machine-readable commands, all running entirely on your local machine.