This plugin adds Copilot-like code completion support to Vim. It uses Ollama as a backend, which can run locally and does not require cloud services, thus preserving your privacy.
Copilot.vim by Tim Pope is an excellent plugin for both Vim and NeoVim. However, it is limited to Microsoft's Copilot, a commercial cloud-based AI that requires sending all your data to Microsoft.
With Ollama and freely available LLMs (e.g., Llama3, Codellama, Deepseek-coder-v2, etc.), you can achieve similar results without relying on the cloud. While other plugins are available, they typically require NeoVim, which isn't an alternative for me. I prefer using Vim in the terminal and do not want to switch to NeoVim for various reasons.
- Intelligent AI-based code completion (aka tab completion)
- Integrated chat support for code reviews and other interactions
- Automatic code editing based on natural language (NEW in V1.0)
- Supports inline-diff view for accepting changes interactively
- Or accept without prompt for a Git based workflow using vim-fugitive
(e.g. using
:Gvdiffsplit
)
The plugin uses Python scripts, e.g. complete.py
and chat.py
, to communicate with Ollama via its REST API. The first
script handles code completion tasks, while the second script is used for interactive chat conversations. The Vim plugin
uses these scripts via I/O redirection to integrate AI results into Vim.
[!NOTE] This plugin supports Vim only, not NeoVim! If you're looking for a NeoVim plugin, check out LLM.
- Python 3.x
- Python package:
httpx>=0.23.3
,requests
,jinja2
If you're using a Debian-based distribution, you can install the required library directly:
sudo apt install python3-httpx python3-jinja2
System wide installation using pip install
is not recommended,
use a virtual environment instead.
You need to run Vim from a shell with this Python environment to make this working.
Example:
python -m venv $HOME/vim-ollama
source $HOME/vim-ollama/bin/activate
pip install httpx>=0.23.3
pip install requests
pip install jinja2
Testing: You can test the python script on the shell to verify that it is working and all requirements are found. The script should output a completion as shown below:
$> cd path/to/vim-ollama/python
$> echo -e 'def compute_gcd(x, y): <FILL_IN_HERE>return result' | ./complete.py -u http://localhost:11434 -m codellama:7b-code
if x == 0:
return y
else:
return compute_gcd(y % x, x)
def compute_lcm(x, y):
result = (x * y) / compute_gcd(x, y)
Install gergap/vim-ollama
using vim-plug or any other plugin manager.
vim-plug example:
call plug#begin()
...
Plug 'gergap/vim-ollama'
call plug#end()
Since V0.4, the plugin includes a setup wizard that helps you set up your initial configuration. This is especially useful for new users who are not familiar with Ollama or the different LLMs available as Open Source.
The plugin will run the wizard automatically if the configuration file
~/.vim/config/ollama.vim
does not yet exist. If you want to start the wizard
again, you can use the command :Ollama setup
at any time, but be aware that
it will overwrite the configuration file at the end.
It is recommended to use the file ~/.vim/config/ollama.vim
for configuring Vim-Ollama,
but you can also override the settings in ~/.vimrc
as in previous versions.
Use the command :Ollama config
to open the Vim-Ollama configuration file.
If you are migrating from previous versions, note that the FIM tokens are not configured anymore in Vim,
but in the bundled JSON config files. You can simply remove the old settings from your
.vimrc
. The plugin should work with the most popular models out-of-the-box.
The most important variables: (see :help vim-ollama
for more information)
Variable | Default | Description |
---|---|---|
g:ollama_host |
http://localhost:11434 |
The URL of the Ollama server. |
g:ollama_model |
starcoder2:3b |
The LLM for code completions. |
g:ollama_edit_model |
qwen2.5-coder:3b |
The LLM for code editing tasks. |
g:ollama_chat_model |
llama3.1:8b |
The LLM for chat conversations. |
When adding new unsupported code completion models you will see an error like ERROR - Config file .../python/configs/foobar.json not found.
.
Simply add this missing file and create a merge request to get it included upstream.
Consult the model's documentation to find out the correct tokens.
Simply start coding. The completions will appear as "ghost text" and can be accepted by pressing <tab>
. To ignore
them, just continue typing or press <C-]>
to dismiss the suggestion.
You can also accept just the one line using <M-Right>
(Alt-Right) or one word
using <M-C-Right>
(Alt-Ctrl-Right) if you don't want to use the complete suggestion.
See :help vim-ollama
for more information.