How to run AI agents on your own server with Ollama and AIK

Alexander Krastev · 2026-09-21

An AI agent needs a model to think with. Usually that model is a big cloud service, and every document the agent reads travels to it. Ollama is a free program that runs open models — on your own computer, or, as a hosted service, on Ollama's servers. AIK works with both through the same switch. Here is how, and what we can honestly say about each.

Two ways to use Ollama

Ollama Cloud. You create an account at ollama.com, add credits, take an API key and paste it into AIK's Settings. The open models run on Ollama's machines. Since 9 November 2026 Ollama Cloud is pay as you go: its free plan ended, so you pay for what you use, and AIK bills nothing on top. It is a cloud — the pages do leave your building.

Ollama on your own machine. The same program, installed locally; the models never leave the room. That needs hardware: a 7–8 billion parameter model wants about 8 GB of memory and is slow on a plain CPU, quick with a graphics card of 8 GB or more. In AIK it is the same dropdown — a local model appears in the list the moment Ollama has it.

The three steps in AIK

1. Get a model. Cloud: pick one from the Ollama Cloud list. Local: an administrator installs it from Admin → Ollama Models, or in a terminal with ollama pull <model>.
2. Set the default. Settings → AI/LLM — the model every agent uses unless told otherwise. Settings → Document Extraction chooses the model that reads documents; a model that can see pictures is needed there for scans and photos.
3. Choose per agent. Each agent has a mode: Auto (the default), Local (a model on your machine), Cloud (a provider on your own key). One agent can read invoices locally while another writes English e-mails with a bigger cloud model, and the run log names which model each step used.

What we know, and what we do not yet

We ran Gemma 4 on Ollama Cloud every day until its free plan ended, and it was good enough for the invoice pipeline, the audit reports and the assistant. What we have not yet measured ourselves is a small model running fully locally on an office PC — how many scanned invoices a 7B model gets right, and how the local embedding model that powers document search behaves on real Bulgarian files. We will publish those numbers when we have them rather than quote someone else's.

What does not depend on the model: AIK's checks. Totals that do not add up, VAT that is not 20 % of net, an EIK that fails its checksum, a supplier seen for the first time — those are in the code, and a doubtful row waits for a person whichever model read it. That is what makes a weaker model usable at all.

Trying it

You can try AIK for free at aikautomation.com with your own model key. To have it on your own computer or server — with local Ollama set up and the first agents pointed at it — you buy a licence and we install it for you. Get in touch, or read the local-LLM page first.