Model dropdown empty in Firefox until saving Ollama as provider

[jeffpaul]

Describe the bug

When configuring Ollama as the service provider (e.g., for Title Generation), the Model selection dropdown is empty at first. Only after saving Ollama as the chosen provider and refreshing the settings page do the models appear in the dropdown.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Open WordPress Admin > Tools > ClassifAI.
2. Navigate to a feature such as Title Generation.
3. Select Ollama as the service provider.
4. Open the Model dropdown.

Expected: Available Ollama models appear immediately.
Actual: Dropdown is empty until saving and reloading.

Screenshots, screen recording, code snippet

Screen-Recording-2025-08-18-at-6.40.06.PM.mp4

Environment information

Browser: Firefox (latest)
Plugin: ClassifAI 3.5.0
WP version: 6.8.2

WordPress information

No response

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct

[dkotter]

I wouldn't necessarily call this a bug as this is intended behavior, though I do think this can be done better (and mentioned that in a couple recent PRs, #974, #976). Basically all Providers are currently set up to where we don't authenticate anything until the settings have been saved. So in this case, we don't fetch any models until the save event happens.

What I did in both #974 and #976 was to move the model selector out of the Provider selector, so you don't have to click back into the Provider to change that and then also made the model dropdown disabled until we had models to show, that way no one can click into that and wonder why it's empty.

This isn't perfect but is a nicer experience then what we have here. We could look at changing this entirely, where we authenticate the connection and pull models as soon as the Provider is selected, just noting that does differ from every other Provider and is probably worth thinking through if there's an ideal handling here that would work for all Providers (basically is there a better way to authenticate then doing that on save).

We could also just fix this for Ollama if we think that's the better approach. The one thing we'll need to figure out is I believe we'll run into CORS issues trying to fetch the models on the client-side, so likely will need to introduce a REST API endpoint that can get those models for us (so slightly more complicated then it seems). Happy to open a quicker PR that brings things inline with what we did in #974 and #976 if we want that for the 3.6.0 release

[jeffpaul]

This isn't perfect but is a nicer experience then what we have here. We could look at changing this entirely, where we authenticate the connection and pull models as soon as the Provider is selected, just noting that does differ from every other Provider and is probably worth thinking through if there's an ideal handling here that would work for all Providers (basically is there a better way to authenticate then doing that on save).

Yeah, trying to be mindful of not having a different (even if slight) UX for Ollama but definitely a bit of a chafe to have to save and then pop back into the provider selector to get to the model. Finding some way to make that selection a bit less number of clicks would be ideal, happy to pull in some UX help to identify some UI improvements if that's desired?

[iamdharmesh]

@jeffpaul, This how it will look after we move model selector out of the Provider selector (as @dkotter suggested). For other providers we don't have to select the model after click "Save Settings", as we are aware of model there and we have default model for the provider. For, Ollama models are depends on what users have installed. So, still need to select model after adding "Endpoint URL".

Screen.Recording.2025-08-22.at.5.59.18.PM.mov

We can mark the the first model as default model from available models to make this single save flow. But, not sure that will be preferred choice for the most of the users.

[dkotter]

This how it will look after we move model selector out of the Provider selector

Yeah, this would be my suggestion, at least for a quicker fix. Move the model selection out of the Provider section, so you don't have to click into the Provider to change models. Make the models dropdown disabled until we actually have models to choose from, avoiding a situation where someone can click into an empty dropdown. And I'd probably automatically select the first model if we don't have a specific model selected yet (though this could mean we select a model that the user doesn't want but easy enough for them to change it).

I think this is definitely better then what we have currently though noting it still requires someone to save the settings first before we populate the models dropdown (as we don't validate the connection until that happens). But that does match what we do with all other Providers.

[jeffpaul]

Works for me, a decent UX improvement!