Google will turn Gemini Gems into skills starting November 17

Google is retiring Gems, the custom assistants it added to the Gemini app in 2024, and folding them into a newer feature it calls skills. A notice in the Gems manager tells personal account holders the switch begins on November 17, and Google says existing Gems will be converted automatically, so nobody has to rebuild anything by hand. Gems keep working until each one is moved.

The timeline

Google's help page on the transition sets out three waves. Personal Google accounts lose Gems in November 2026. Business, enterprise and non-profit Workspace accounts follow in March 2027, and education accounts in June 2027. Opal, Google's experiment for building small apps, and the Gems made by Google Labs will also shut down in November.

What changes for users

Google describes skills as reusable custom instructions. Rather than opening a separate Gem from the side panel, a user types a slash and the skill's name inside any chat, and Google says the prefix will soon switch to @. Gemini can also pick up a relevant skill without being asked, and several skills can run in one conversation. Up to 100 can be active at once.

The conversion is not like for like yet. Most default tools that Gems could call, including Canvas, Deep Research, guided learning, and video and music generation, do not work with skills. GitHub files are unsupported, and skills lack the per-assistant list of past chats that Gems had. Sharing, Google Drive files and Gemini Notebook support are promised "in the coming weeks." Skills are stored as SKILL.md files, and Google says ones built on other platforms can be imported by uploading them.

TechCrunch argues the move shows the cost of Google giving each AI feature its own brand and menu slot, then merging them later, and notes the slash command suits engineers more than casual users.

What we don't know yet

Google has not said whether links to shared Gems will survive the switch, how the automatic conversion treats files it cannot carry over, or whether a Gem built around Canvas or Deep Research will keep that behavior once it becomes a skill. Skills were first limited to paid AI Pro and Ultra plans; the help page now lists chat access for all adult personal accounts, but it is unclear whether every skill feature will stay free.