Summarise a Lease Offline with Ollama — Nothing Leaves Your Laptop

Why this works

A lease holds your deposit, your notice period, and who fixes the boiler. Most people sign without reading it closely, and cloud chatbots ask you to upload personal documents. Ollama lets you do the reading on your own machine.

Step by step

1. Install OllamaDownload the installer from ollama.com for macOS, Windows, or Linux and open a terminal. Check the install with ollama --version.
2. Download one small modelRun ollama pull llama3.2 (or another instruct model from the Ollama library that fits your RAM). The download happens once; afterwards the model runs offline.
3. Turn the lease into textExport the lease to a text file. If it is a scan, run it through the OCR guide in this directory first, then save the output as lease.txt.
4. Ask for a structured summaryUse the prompt below, paste the lease text after it, and keep the answer in a file next to the lease.
5. Check every number against the sourceOpen the original clause for each rent amount, date, and deadline. A small model can misread a clause; the page reference is what counts.

Copy-paste prompt

You are helping a tenant read a lease. Using only the text below, list: (1) monthly rent and due date, (2) deposit amount and conditions for return, (3) notice period for ending the tenancy, (4) who is responsible for repairs and by when, (5) any clause about fees, late payments, or entry. For each item give the section number or quote. If something is not stated, write 'not stated'. Do not give legal advice.

LEASE TEXT:
<paste here>

Check your result

• Every figure has a quoted clause or section number next to it
• Anything marked 'not stated' is double-checked in the original
• The lease file never left your computer

Pitfalls to avoid

• Long leases can exceed a small model's context window; split the document by section and summarise each part.
• A summary is not legal advice. For disputes, use the civic guides linked below.