Gemini Gems Are Becoming Skills: What Google Workspace Teams Need to Know

Google is replacing Gemini Gems with skills. For Workspace business and enterprise accounts, Gems will stop working no sooner than March 1, 2027.

Existing Gems will automatically migrate into skills, but they’ll show up as inactive drafts. Each one will have to be manually reviewed and activated. Don’t wait for that. Rebuild your high-priority Gems now so you can test your new Gemini skills and keep your workflows running smoothly when the changeover takes effect.

In this post, we cover the transition timeline, what skills are, what the automated migration does, and step-by-step instructions for how to rebuild your Gems as skills.

When Are Gems Going Away? Key Dates to Know

The transition from Gemini Gems to skills will happen gradually. Here are the dates you need to know:

DATE	WHAT HAPPENS
October 5, 2026	Skills begin rolling out in Workspace.
October 13, 2026	Skills begin rolling out in the Gemini app for all users.
November 17, 2026	Gems move to Settings in the Gemini app. You can still create, edit, and use them.
No sooner than March 1, 2027	Business and Enterprise accounts:Gems can’t be created, edited, or used.Flows in Google Workspace Studio with the “Ask a Gem” step stop working.Existing Gems automatically migrate to draft skills in the Gemini app.
No sooner than June 1, 2027	The same changes apply to Education accounts.

The official cutoff isn’t set in stone. Google will provide more details about automated Gems-to-skills migration at least 30 days before it starts.

The transition timeline is important, but the biggest change is how you’ll use Gemini. So let’s look at what skills are, and what they can do that Gems can’t.

What Are Gemini Skills?

Just like a Gemini Gem, a skill is a saved set of custom instructions. Both Gems and skills have expertise in a specialized task and can be grounded in your own uploaded reference materials.

But skills go a little further. They offer a modular way to apply your custom instructions in any Gemini conversation as well as across Workspace apps.

Skills use an open, Markdown-based SKILL.md format. This makes them easy to customize and transfer between compatible tools like ChatGPT and Claude.

There are also some differences in how you use skills:

• Type / (and soon @) followed by the skill’s name in any chat. You don’t have to open a separate Gem window.
• Combine multiple skills in one prompt. They’re stackable, so you can layer them to create complex, multi-step workflow automations without copying and pasting outputs.
• Create skills manually by filling out a three-part form, let Gemini build one for you, or simply upload an existing SKILL.md file.

Gemini can even apply a skill on its own. The skill is automatically triggered based on the context of your work, so you don’t have to invoke it yourself.

What’s Changing: Gemini Gems vs. Skills

Skills build on what Gems already do. Here’s a quick overview of how Gems and skills compare with each other:

FEATURE	GEMINI GEMS	GEMINI SKILLS
How they work	Customized versions of Gemini with specialized instructions and knowledge	Modular sets of instructions that can be applied to different tasks and workflows
Where you use them	In the Gemini app or in a Workspace side panel	In the Gemini app and supported Google Workspace apps
How you invoke them	Select a Gem from the Gemini app or open it as an isolated Gem chat	Type / (and soon @) followed by the skill’s name, or let Gemini invoke it automatically when relevant
Can you combine them?	No	Yes, you can layer skills for more complex workflows
Can you share them?	Yes	Yes, in Workspace Studio (shareability coming soon to Gemini app skills)
Reference materials	Up to 10 files, at 100 MB each	Up to 100 MB total
Format	Proprietary	SKILL.md file, portable across compatible platforms

In some areas, skills are still catching up to Gems. Many default tools that are available in Gems don’t yet work with skills, including Canvas, Deep Research, Guided Learning, Create video, and Create music.

Use Google Workspace Studio? If any of your existing flows incorporate an “Ask a Gem” step, you’ll have to update them with an “Ask Gemini” step – where you can also incorporate a skill. However, skills don’t currently sync between the Gemini app and Workspace apps, so you’ll have to manually recreate them in Studio.

See Google’s Workspace Studio transition guide for more details.

Automated Migration: What Happens to Your Existing Gems?

When Gemini Gems officially retire, Google will automatically convert your remaining Gems into skills. Their names, descriptions, instructions, and knowledge files will carry over.

But there’s a catch. Migrated Gems won’t automatically be usable. They’ll appear as inactive drafts in your skills list, and you’ll have to review and activate them individually before they can be used.

You can create as many skills as you like, with up to 100 active simultaneously.

Another limitation: skills have a 100 MB total size limit for attached files. If a Gem exceeds that amount, Google will automatically remove the largest files first until it’s under the limit.

Some file types aren’t supported in skills, either. When your Gems transition to skills, the following unsupported file types won’t be included:

• GitHub files
• Audio files
• Video files
• Legacy Microsoft Office file formats: .doc, .xls, .ppt
• Archives and compressed file formats like .zip and .rar

Tip: Get ahead of Google’s automatic migration by rebuilding your most important Gems now. You’ll have time to identify and resolve issues and validate critical workflows well before the deadline, avoiding disruptions and downtime.

How to Rebuild Your Gems as Skills

Review your existing Gemini Gems and identify the ones your team relies on most, or the ones that support your most important workflows. These Gems should be your top priorities for manual migration.

Here’s how to rebuild them as skills:

Step 1: Open your Gem and download any knowledge files.

Next to the Gem you want to recreate, click Edit. If the Gem has files under “Knowledge,” download them to your device.

Create a new destination folder for these files and name it the same as your skill, in all lowercase letters with hyphens separating words: e.g. sample-skill-name. Move all of your downloaded knowledge files into this folder.

Step 2: Create a new skill and duplicate your Gem details.

In a separate browser tab, open Gemini. On the sidebar, click Customize (if you don’t find it, first click More) and then Skills → Create → Create manually.

Copy and paste the name, description, and custom instructions from your Gem to your skill.

(Note: Gemini uses the information in your description to decide when to apply a skill, so you may want to edit it and name specific examples of when the skill should be used. For more details, see Google’s tips for writing effective skills.)

Click Create at the top.

If you don’t need to add any knowledge files, that’s it! You’re done. If you do need to add files, continue to step 3.

Step 3: To add knowledge files, download your skill and upload it with your files.

Next to the skill you just created, click More options → Download. This will download a .zip file containing the SKILL.md file.

Open the .zip file and move the SKILL.md file into the folder containing the knowledge files you downloaded earlier from your Gem.

Back on the Skills page, next to the same skill, click More options → Replace skill, and then upload the folder when prompted. Note that the folder name must match the skill name.

Step 4: Test your new skill.

Confirm that your new skill behaves as expected. Try using a prompt to trigger the skill without actually calling it directly, to see if Gemini applies it on its own. Check that any knowledge files are used correctly and produce the expected results.

Finally, make sure the skill is turned on.

Get Ready for What’s Next with Gemini

Skills turn your custom instructions into reusable building blocks. Instead of keeping expertise stuck behind individual Gems, you can build modular instructions and mix and match them across conversations, Workspace apps, and even other compatible AI tools.

Teams that start learning Gemini skills now will be able to adapt faster – and more features are on the way. Get ahead of the transition and build skills on your own schedule, so you’re not left scrambling when the time comes.

Wursta helps Google Workspace teams get the most out of Gemini. Reach out and discover how we can help you transform your everyday workflows.