Google is rolling out Skills globally within Gemini chat to replace the discontinued Gems feature. This update aligns the platform with OpenAI and Anthropic by adopting a standard prompt format designed for autonomous agents. Users can now save specific instructions as a Skill and trigger them by typing a forward slash followed by the name. The system generates these prompts from past conversations and executes them automatically when relevant conditions are met. Multiple Skills can chain together to handle complex workflows involving writing styles and brand guidelines. Reference material now includes text documents, PDFs, and images, with plans to add Google Drive integration and enterprise support in coming weeks.
The shift signals a move away from static, pre-trained models toward dynamic, instruction-driven interactions that function like software tools. By standardising how users define tasks, Google ensures compatibility across different AI ecosystems while reducing the friction of repetitive prompting. Existing Gems convert automatically to Skills before their shutdown in November, preserving user data and workflows. The end of the Opal mini-app experiment also marks a consolidation of Google’s experimental AI features into this unified framework.
- Skills launch globally for personal accounts immediately
- Gems shut down in November for personal users
- Enterprise and education versions end in March and June 2027
