I'm trying to use Continue.dev with a local model running on Ollama, but keep getting the "file exceeds context length" error.
My config looks like this:
- name: qwen3-coder
provider: ollama
model: qwen3-coder
apiBase: http://localhost:11434/
contextLength: 256000
roles:
- chat
Even when setting contextLength to an inaccurately large value (2560000), I get the same error on a file that should fit in context (29 KB). The contextLength setting seems to be ignored.
The problem was on the Ollama side. Ollama has a default context window size of 4096 tokens. To see the context window size for the current model, run:
ollama show qwen3-coder
If there is no entry that says:
Parameters
num_ctx 256000
then the default is 4096.
You need to override this somehow. For a one-time change:
ollama run qwen3-coder /set parameter num_ctx 256000
Or to make it permanent:
ollama show qwen3-coder --modelfile > temp.modelfile
echo "PARAMETER num_ctx 256000" >> temp.modelfile
ollama create qwen3-coder -f temp.modelfile
Make sure you have the right context length in your Continue.dev config too:
- name: qwen3-coder
contextLength: 256000
Then edit the Continue.dev config.yaml to trigger a model reload, and it should solve the Continue.dev "file size exceeds context length" error, unless the file exceeds the true context length.