If you repeat the same instructions for a recurring Gemini task, Google’s new skills feature is designed to let you save them and call them up again. The company says skills are rolling out globally in Gemini chat; Google Workspace business, enterprise, nonprofit and education customers are expected to get the functionality in the coming weeks. Google’s announcement says you can invoke a saved skill by typing a forward slash and its name.
The change matters if you use Gems, Google’s existing tool for tailored instructions. Google plans to phase out Gems on different dates for personal and Workspace accounts, and says existing Gems will migrate automatically. But some features are still on the way, and one type of Gems will not migrate.
How Gemini skills work
Google says Gemini can help create skills from your chats and automatically run them when you enter a matching prompt. You can also combine multiple skills and add reference files, including plain text documents, PDFs and images.
Examples from Google include saving instructions to outline presentation slides, write talking points and prepare for audience questions. Another example is combining a writing-style skill with brand guidelines. For repeated tasks, start by identifying instructions you tend to reuse; Google says you can then run a saved skill from the prompt bar with “/” followed by its name.
Skills are available to people aged 18 and over across Google AI subscription tiers, according to the company. Google says availability for users under 18 is coming later. The company’s examples describe ways to reuse instructions; they do not guarantee that a generated response will meet your needs, so review the output as you normally would.
Check the Gems transition dates
Google says it will remove support for Gems starting in November 2026 for personal accounts, March 2027 for Workspace business, enterprise and nonprofit customers, and June 2027 for Workspace education customers. The company says it will automatically migrate existing Gems into skills when Gems go away.
The transition will not bring every feature immediately. Google says skills will get Gems features such as sharing and adding files from Google Drive and notebooks from Gemini Notebook in the coming weeks. If you rely on either capability, check whether it is available before changing a workflow around it.
There is also an exception to the migration promise: Gems by Google Labs will shut down but will not migrate into skills. Google says its Opal mini-app experiment will also shut down in November.
A practical first step is to choose one recurring set of instructions and try it as a skill when available. If you use Gems, check whether yours are standard Gems or Google Labs Gems, then note the applicable end-of-support date. Which recurring task would you want to save as a skill?
Source image: Google.