Setting Up a Local AI Coding Assistant with Ollama + Continue

If you want AI coding help without sending your code to the cloud, here’s how to set up a fully local AI assistant.

What you need:
– A decent GPU (16GB+ VRAM recommended) or Apple Silicon Mac (M1 Pro or better)
– Ollama (free, runs models locally)
– Continue extension for VS Code (free, open source)

Setup steps:
1. Install Ollama from ollama.ai
2. Pull a coding model: ollama pull codellama:34b or ollama pull deepseek-coder-v2
3. Install the Continue extension in VS Code
4. Configure Continue to point to your local Ollama instance
5. Start coding with AI that never leaves your machine

Model recommendations:
– For autocomplete: deepseek-coder-v2:16b (fast, good quality)
– For chat/explanation: codellama:34b or qwen2.5-coder:32b
– If you have lots of VRAM: deepseek-v3 (amazing quality)

Performance reality check: Local models are good but not as good as GPT-4o or Claude Opus for complex reasoning. For routine coding tasks, they’re perfectly fine. For architecture decisions or complex debugging, you might still want a cloud model.

Biggest benefit: Complete privacy. Your proprietary code never leaves your machine. Essential for anyone working on sensitive projects.

Anyone running a local setup? What model are you using?