Google is retiring Gems, the custom versions of its Gemini chatbot, and replacing them with a new system called Skills. For personal Google accounts, the change begins on 17 November 2026, when Gems become read-only, and the original Gems disappear entirely on 17 December. Anyone who built a Gem with files attached should check what will survive the move before the December deadline.

Gems arrived in August 2024 as Google's way of letting people create personalised versions of Gemini. A user wrote instructions once, attached whatever files the assistant needed, and opened that Gem whenever the task came up. The drawback was that every Gem lived in its own separate chat, so using one meant leaving the conversation already in progress. Google announced on 30 September that Skills would replace them, and Skills are already available in Gemini under Customize and then Skills.

Skills work differently. Instead of opening a separate assistant, a skill can be called up inside any Gemini chat, in the middle of an existing conversation, by typing a slash followed by the skill name, and Google plans to switch that trigger to the at sign. Gemini can also apply a skill on its own when a prompt matches the skill's description, and several skills can be stacked in one chat. Skills are built on the open SKILL.md standard, which makes them transferable to other AI platforms such as Claude and ChatGPT, and a skill built for Claude can be copied into Gemini by pasting its name, description and instructions or by uploading its SKILL.md file.

The timetable depends on the type of account. For personal Google accounts belonging to users aged 18 and older, Gems start converting to Skills on 17 November. On that date the original Gems stay visible for reference but can no longer be used, edited or created, and on 17 December they are removed from the account entirely. Google says it will migrate existing Gems automatically, but files attached to Gems face new limits. Each skill is capped at 100 MB of reference files, and Google will delete the largest files to bring a skill under that limit. Unsupported file types are dropped, including legacy Microsoft Office formats, compressed archives, GitHub files, and audio and video files. Those files are deleted on 17 December, so users should download them first.

Workspace accounts follow a later schedule. For business, enterprise and non-profit users, Gems move into the Settings panel on 17 November but keep working until at least 1 March 2027. Education users will not see their Gems removed before 1 June 2027. Google has not announced when the transition starts for users under 18, and it has delayed the rollout of Skills to Workspace apps such as Docs, Sheets, Slides and Studio without giving a new date.

Skills also come with restrictions that Gems did not have. They do not yet work with Canvas, Deep Research, Guided Learning, video creation or music creation. Content from Google Drive and Gemini Notebook cannot be added, skills cannot be shared with other users, and only 100 skills can be active at one time. Google says sharing and Drive support are coming in the following weeks. Skills began inside Gemini Spark, Google's agent for paying subscribers, but in regular chat they are free.

For most users the practical steps are simple. Simple text-based Gems should survive the automatic migration without attention. Anyone with a Gem that carries knowledge files should open it, download every file listed under the Knowledge heading, and recreate the Gem as a skill manually before 17 December if the files matter. The change is part of a wider shift in how Google organises Gemini: custom instructions are moving out of separate chatbots and into reusable skills that travel with the user across conversations.