How to run Ollama large language models (LLM) on GitHub Actions for free

Ollama

This article goes over how to run Ollama large language models (LLM) on GitHub Actions for free.

Ollama

Ollama is a CLI that runs LLMs.

To run it on Linux, copy the install command and follow the example:

# .github/workflows/ollama.yml
name: ollama
on: push

jobs:
  ollama:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - name: Install ollama
        run: curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | bash
      - name: Run LLM
        run: ollama run llama3.2 'What is a large language model?'

ollama-action

To run Ollama on macOS or Windows, use ollama-action:

# .github/workflows/ollama.yml
name: ollama
on: push

jobs:
  ollama:
    runs-on: macos-latest

    steps:
      - name: Run LLM
        uses: ai-action/ollama-action@v1
        id: llm
        with:
          model: llama3.2
          prompt: What is a large language model?

      - name: Print response
        env:
          response: ${{ steps.llm.outputs.response }}
        run: echo "$response"

setup-ollama

To use the Ollama CLI on macOS or Windows, use setup-ollama:

# .github/workflows/ollama.yml
name: ollama
on: push

jobs:
  ollama:
    runs-on: windows-latest

    steps:
      - name: Setup ollama
        uses: ai-action/setup-ollama@v1

      - name: Print response
        run: ollama run llama3.2 'What is a large language model?'

Code Review Example

Here’s an example of using Ollama to add a code review comment to a pull request:

# .github/workflows/code-review.yml
name: Code Review
on: pull_request

permissions:
  contents: read
  pull-requests: write

jobs:
  code-review:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Setup ollama
        uses: ai-action/setup-ollama@v1

      - name: Checkout repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Code review comment
        run: |
          PROMPT='Code review the changes below:'
          RESPONSE=$(ollama run codellama "$PROMPT\n$(gh pr diff $PR_NUMBER)")
          gh pr comment $PR_NUMBER --body "$RESPONSE"
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ github.token }}
          PR_NUMBER: ${{ github.event.pull_request.number }}

See the example for more details.

This article was originally published on remarkablemark.org on February 23, 2025.