From ollama run to Tokens: What Really Happens When You Run an LLM Locally

📰 Dev.to · Akshit Zatakia

Learn what happens when you run an LLM locally, from ollama run to tokens, and understand the underlying process

intermediate Published 14 Apr 2026
Action Steps
  1. Run an LLM locally using ollama run to understand the command-line interface
  2. Explore the tokenization process to see how input text is converted into tokens
  3. Configure the LLM model to accept custom input and generate output
  4. Test the LLM model with different inputs to evaluate its performance
  5. Analyze the output tokens to understand how the model generates text
Who Needs to Know This

Developers and data scientists working with LLMs can benefit from understanding the local runtime process to optimize and troubleshoot their models

Key Insight

💡 Running an LLM locally involves a complex process of tokenization, model configuration, and output generation

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🤖 Learn how LLMs work locally, from ollama run to tokens! 🚀
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