Google is preparing to retire Gems, the custom versions of Gemini it has spent the past couple of years building up. In its place, Gemini is picking up new skills… literally. Starting today, Google is rolling out skills in Gemini chat globally to users aged 18 and older. Skills let you save instructions for things you repeatedly ask Gemini to do, removing the need to rebuild the same detailed prompt every time.
Gemini can remember how you want things done
The idea behind this feature is to make customization part of a regular Gemini conversation. So you’re not forced to repeat prompts for recurring workflows in separate custom chatbots. Once you’ve written a useful set of instructions, you can save it as a skill and call on it again whenever you need it. This is handy for prompts that include a lot of little preferences you usually find yourself copying and pasting over and over again.
While it is replacing Gems, the company isn’t letting go of some of the parts it did right. Over the coming weeks, skills will gain the ability to be shared with other people, along with support for adding files from Google Drive and notebooks from Gemini Notebook. Those are features existing Gem users already rely on, so Google is essentially moving the functionality into the new system rather than removing it.
Gems have an expiration date
For personal Google accounts, Gems support ends in November 2026. Meanwhile, Gems for business, enterprise, and nonprofit customers end in March 2027, followed by Workspace education customers in June 2027. You won’t have to manually rebuild everything you’ve already created. Google is making sure existing Gems will automatically migrate into skills once Gems disappear.
Interestingly, even free Gemini users will have access to skills. It is available in Gemini chat globally starting today for users aged 18 and older, while Google Workspace business, enterprise, and education accounts will receive the feature in the coming weeks. Gems were essentially Google’s way of letting you build specialized little versions of Gemini. So Skills is taking that same foundation a little bit further.
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