Trying to use OllamaPromptDriver without Ollama running causes infinite loop

[steamroller-kb]

• [X ] I have read and agree to the contributing guidelines.

Describe the bug
If you try to instantiate a chat using an OllamaPromptDriver, but Ollama is not currently running on your machine, it gets stuck in an infinite loop of printing warnings. If stream=True is set, then even CTRL+C can't kill the process, and the entire terminal needs to killed to stop it (or Task Manager). If stream is not set, you can CTRL+C out of it, and it just prints a stack trace and exits.

To Reproduce
With Ollama not running on your machine:

from griptape.drivers import OllamaPromptDriver
from griptape.structures import Agent
from griptape.utils import Chat

agent = Agent(
    prompt_driver=OllamaPromptDriver(temperature=0.7, model="llama3.2"),
    # stream=True # This is optional for the error, but if set, will cause SIGINT not to kill the process, leading to it running forever until terminated by Task Manager or by killing the terminal
)
Chat(agent).start()

Expected behavior
It would maybe throw one error and exit, or at least be able to CTRL+C out of it even with stream enabled.

Screenshots

Desktop (please complete the following information):

• OS: Windows 10 Pro
• OS Version: 22H2
• GripTape Version: Latest from git+https://github.com/griptape-ai/griptape.git@dev

[collindutter]

Hi @steamroller-kb, this is intended behavior. Prompt Drivers will exponentially retry max_attempts times. You can change this number by passing in max_attempts=N to the Prompt Driver.

Regarding CTRL+C, you should be able to press it a few times to have it break out fully.

[shhlife]

I wonder if we should reduce the max_attempts? I think default is 10 - but I find 2 or 3 is usually fine in most casess.. what do you think @collindutter ?

[collindutter]

Agreed that 10 is probably too many, but would like to get input from others. Technically this would be a breaking change so we'd have to file it as a griptape 2.0 change.

[shhlife]

Sweet, I've logged an enhancement request! #1439

[shhlife]

Oh, @collindutter looking back at this I mean to ask - would it be possible to check for ollama to be running & return an error about that if it isn't?

I think that's more of the issue here - @steamroller-kb didn't have ollama running, and instead of returning quickly, it tried over and over again.

Seems like a nicer response would be to let the user know they need to start ollama first?