Google Skills replaces Gems in Gemini and Workspace: what you need to know
Google Skills, reusable slash-command prompt modules in open SKILL.md format, permanently replaces Gems from October 2026.
Google has announced that Skills will permanently replace Gems across the Gemini app and Google Workspace. The rollout begins on 5 October 2026 for Workspace and 13 October 2026 for the Gemini app, with Gems starting their exit in November 2026.
If you use Gems regularly, whether for brand voice, lesson planning, email drafting, or anything else, there are real differences here worth understanding before the clock runs out.
What Skills actually are
Skills are reusable sets of custom instructions you create once and invoke whenever you need them, directly inside a conversation. You trigger them by typing / followed by the skill’s name, and Gemini applies those instructions to your prompt. No separate window, no switching context.
The meaningful upgrade over Gems is that you can stack multiple Skills in a single prompt. An educator, for example, could call a “lesson plan” skill and an “institutional brand guidelines” skill at the same time. A business user could pair a “vendor evaluator” skill with an “executive email drafter” skill to analyse suppliers and draft a recommendation in one step. Gems were a one-at-a-time proposition. Skills are not.
Skills also work inside Workspace apps, something Gems never did. That means the same reusable instructions you build for Gmail or Docs are available wherever you’re working in Workspace, not just in a dedicated chat window.
The open SKILL.md format
Skills are built on SKILL.md, an open, Markdown-based standard that originated with Anthropic and is now used across Claude Code, Codex CLI, and Gemini CLI. A Skill is a self-contained folder containing a SKILL.md file that packages instructions, documentation snippets, code examples, and behavioural guidance into a compact unit. It can also include scripts, files, or background context, with Python and Bash execution supported.
The practical implication is portability. If you have built Skills on another platform using the SKILL.md standard, you can import them directly into Gemini. Google accepts SKILL.md files or ZIP archives, with the SKILL.md file placed in the root directory.
This is a meaningful shift in how Google is positioning Gemini. Rather than a proprietary system that locks you into one assistant, Skills are designed to travel with you across tools. One set of instructions, usable wherever the standard is supported.
What this means for your Gems
Google will auto-migrate remaining Gems to draft Skills eventually, but the timeline varies by account type.
- Personal Google accounts: Gem support removed from November 2026.
- Workspace Business, Enterprise, and Nonprofit customers: Gem support removed from March 2027.
- Workspace Education customers: Gem support removed from June 2027.
From 17 November 2026, Gems move to the Settings panel of the Gemini app, where you can still create, edit, and use them for a while. But the direction of travel is clear. If you want to get ahead of this, Google’s recommendation is to manually recreate your Gems as Skills rather than waiting for the auto-migration.
One thing worth flagging for Workspace Studio users: you can no longer create new “Ask a Gem” steps. Existing steps continue to work for now, but that avenue is closed for new builds.
What you need to do
A few things require deliberate action on your part.
Skills do not sync between the Gemini app and Workspace. If you want a Skill available in both places, you need to create it in both. This is the most practically inconvenient aspect of the launch, and it is worth building that into your migration planning rather than discovering it after the fact.
Recreate sooner rather than later. Auto-migration will eventually convert remaining Gems to draft Skills, but the result will be drafts you still need to review and finalise. Taking control of the process yourself gives you cleaner, tested results.
Check what features are still coming. At launch, Skills do not yet support sharing with others or attaching files from Google Drive and Gemini Notebook. Google has said these features are on the way, so if your current Gems rely on shared access or file attachments, it is worth holding off on migrating those specific ones until those capabilities arrive.
Availability
Skills in the Gemini app are available to all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google accounts. Skills in Workspace are available across Business Starter, Standard, and Plus; Enterprise Starter, Standard, and Plus; Google AI Pro for Education; and AI Expanded Access add-ons. Skills in Workspace require users to be aged 18 or over; Skills in the Gemini app are available to users of all ages.
The Workspace rollout completes for Rapid Release domains by 12 October 2026. You can also use the skill builder in Google Docs to craft and share new Skills with your team directly.
The broader picture here is that the AI assistant market is converging around portable, reusable instruction formats rather than proprietary persona systems. Gems were Google’s version of a walled-garden approach. Skills, built on an open standard shared with Anthropic and OpenAI tooling, are a deliberate step away from that. For users, the near-term work is a migration. The longer-term benefit is instructions you actually own and can take with you.
Updates to this story
4 October 2026: Gems can no longer accept new ‘Ask a Gem’ steps in Workspace Studio, migration guide updated
As of 5 October 2026, Google has locked the “Ask a Gem” step in Workspace Studio. You can no longer add it to new or existing flows, though flows that already contain it continue to work for now.
Google’s admin transition page has also published the full deprecation schedule, which is more detailed than what was available when the original article was written. The key dates to note:
- 5 October 2026: Skills roll out in Workspace (Rapid Release); no new “Ask a Gem” steps permitted.
- 13 October 2026: Skills roll out in the Gemini app; Gems and Skills coexist temporarily.
- 17 November 2026: Gems move to the Settings panel but remain usable.
- No sooner than 1 March 2027: Business and enterprise Gems are removed. Studio flows with “Ask a Gem” stop working. Remaining Gems in the Gemini app auto-migrate to draft Skills, meaning they require manual review before use.
- No sooner than 1 June 2027: The same end-of-life applies to education accounts, including Google Classroom and Gemini LTI integrations.
One important constraint confirmed by Google’s Studio support page: Skills do not sync between the Gemini app and Workspace, so any Gem used across both surfaces must be manually rebuilt in Workspace Studio.