Google Brings Reusable Skills to Gemini Chat, Replacing Gems

Google is rolling out skills, reusable custom instructions that run directly inside Gemini chat, to users globally, and says the feature will replace Gems as its tool for tailoring Gemini to specific tasks. The rollout was announced September 30, 2026, in a post on The Keyword by Deven Tokuno, Senior Product Manager for the Gemini App.

Once a user creates a skill, it can be run again by typing a forward slash and the skill’s name directly in the prompt bar. A Gemini Apps help center page documenting the transition states that the invocation will soon move from / to @, and it lists two other core behaviors: Gemini automatically recognizes when a skill is relevant to the current prompt and applies it, and multiple skills can be combined in a single chat.

Skills are available across all Google AI subscription tiers and are currently limited to users 18 and older, with access for users under 18 coming soon, according to a footnote in the announcement. The capability was already available in Gemini Spark before the global chat rollout. Google said it will bring the functionality to Google Workspace business, enterprise, nonprofit, and education customers in the coming weeks, and the help center confirms skills are live for individuals over 18 signed in to a personal Google Account, with expansion to work and school accounts planned.

How Skills Work in Gemini Chat

The announcement describes several intended uses. A user can build a custom skill to outline slides, craft talking points, and prepare for Q&A sessions ahead of a class presentation or project pitch. A writing-style skill applies what Gemini knows about a user’s writing style across Workspace apps to speed up drafting, which Google describes as keeping the user in full control. A brainstorming skill can direct Gemini to always provide three to five distinct viewpoints on a topic to help refine arguments or reach a decision.

Gemini can also help build custom skills from a user’s chats and run them automatically whenever a matching prompt is entered. For larger tasks, multiple skills can be stacked at the same time; Google’s example combines a writing-style skill with a brand-guidelines skill to produce on-brand assets in the user’s voice. Starting September 30, 2026, users can create skills that include reference files such as plain text documents, PDFs, and images.

The help center sets out operating limits and import options. Users can create as many skills as they want, but only 100 can be active at a time, and reaching the cap means disabling one skill to enable another. Skills created on other platforms can be imported by uploading their SKILL.md files, though the option to upload files to create skills is currently available only in the Gemini app on Mac and in the Gemini web app at gemini.google.com.

Skills work with Connected Apps such as Workspace apps, but the help center lists several Gemini features they do not yet support, including video creation, music creation, Canvas, Deep Research, and guided learning. Google also published best practices for writing effective skills: define the specific situations in which Gemini should use the skill automatically, keep instructions focused on the unique guidelines for the task, and include concrete examples of the expected output.

Gems Retirement Timeline and Migration

Google says that in the coming weeks, skills will gain the features Gems offered, including the ability to share them with others and to add files from Google Drive and notebooks from Gemini Notebook. The company will remove support for Gems on a schedule that varies by account type: November 2026 for personal Google accounts, March 2027 for Workspace business, enterprise, and nonprofit accounts, and June 2027 for Workspace education accounts.

Google says it will automatically recreate Gems as skills when they are removed, including supported knowledge files. The help center notes that GitHub files are not currently supported in skills. Users who want to move sooner can follow a documented manual process: download a Gem’s knowledge files, create a skill from the Skills page, copy over the Gem’s name, description, and instructions, then upload the files together with the skill’s SKILL.md file inside a folder whose name matches the skill’s name in lowercase hyphenated format.

Opal, Google’s experiment for building mini apps, is also scheduled to turn down in November 2026, and Gems by Google Labs will go away at the same time without migrating into skills. According to Google’s Opal FAQ for developers, Opal mini-apps chain together text, image, and video prompts and can use tools such as web search to produce artifacts including reports, videos, storyboards, and design documents.

Google says it is replacing Gems because skills work inside the current chat without switching tabs and can be stacked together for more customized workflows. The automatic migration of Gems into skills is scheduled to take place as Gems go away for each account type, beginning with personal accounts in November 2026.