Gemini Gems: Examples, Limits and the Move to Skills

A Gemini Gem is a custom version of Gemini: a name, standing instructions and optional knowledge files that you select whenever you want Gemini to work a certain way, such as editing in your house style or drafting replies to customer emails. Gems still work today, but they are on their way out. Google says that starting in November 2026, Gems go away on personal Google accounts and are automatically transitioned to skills; Workspace business, enterprise and nonprofit accounts follow in March 2027, and education accounts in June 2027. Skills are reusable instructions that Gemini can also pick up on its own when a request matches. This post covers useful Gem examples, the limits Gems have now, what converts and what does not, and how to prepare, as of September 30, 2026. For how a Gem compares with a Claude Project, see Claude Projects vs Gemini Gems.

What a Gem is, in one paragraph

Google’s page on using Gems↗ (opens in a new tab) describes the set-up at gemini.google.com: open Gems in the sidebar, choose New Gem, give it a name and instructions, and optionally add knowledge files from your device, Google Drive or a notebook. Gemini can rewrite rough instructions into fuller ones, and you can preview the Gem before saving. A Gem made on the web also shows up in the Gemini mobile app and in the Gemini side panel in Google Workspace. Each chat with a Gem is a fresh conversation that starts from the same set-up, which is why one Gem can serve many unrelated requests.

Gemini Gems examples

Google ships premade Gems to start from. Its page on premade Gems↗ (opens in a new tab) names a Career guide, a Writing editor and a Brainstormer among them, and suggests customizing a copy: add an AP or MLA style guide to the Writing editor, or an audience age range to the Brainstormer. Not every premade Gem can be copied; if there is no Make a copy option, it cannot be customized.

The Gems that earn their place are narrow and repeated. Five that work well for a small team:

• Customer reply drafter: your support policy and tone as knowledge, instructions to draft a reply and flag anything that needs a refund or a manager.
• Meeting notes to action items: paste a transcript, get decisions, open questions and next steps as a plain list with one line per item.
• Release notes writer: a sample of past release notes as knowledge, instructions to turn a list of changes into customer-facing notes in American English.
• Bug report tidier: turns a rough complaint into steps to reproduce, expected result and actual result, and asks for what is missing.
• Policy explainer: your employee handbook from Drive as knowledge, so answers follow the current version of the file.

Instructions work best when they say who the Gem is, what it does, what it needs to know and how the answer should look. A short example:

You turn meeting transcripts into action items for a US software team.
Output three headed lists: Decisions, Open questions, Next steps.
One line per item, starting with a verb, under 15 words.
Put the owner's name in parentheses only if the transcript names one.
If a date is mentioned, write it as "October 14, 2026".
Do not invent owners, dates or decisions that are not in the transcript.

The limits of Gems today

• Where they run: Google’s Gems page says Gems cannot be used with Gemini Live, and you need to be 13 or older, or the applicable age in your country.
• Sharing shows everything. Google’s page on sharing a Gem↗ (opens in a new tab) says anyone with access can see the instructions and files, and warns you not to share a Gem with files in it with anyone who should not see them. Editors can change or delete it.
• No memory of their own. The Gems pages describe instructions and files, not a memory that builds up across a Gem’s chats.
• Apps are account-wide. Connected apps are switched on for your account, not attached to one Gem.
• Knowledge limits are not spelled out on the Gems page itself, so test a large file before you rely on it.

The move to skills: dates and what converts

Google’s page about the transition from Gems to skills↗ (opens in a new tab) gives three dates by account type, and says Google will transition your Gems to skills automatically when Gems go away, including supported files. You do not have to do anything.

• November 2026: personal Google accounts.
• March 2027: Workspace business, enterprise and nonprofit accounts.
• June 2027: Workspace education accounts.

Some things do not carry over. The same page says most default tools available in Gems do not work with skills, naming Create video, Create music, Canvas, Deep research and Guided learning, and that GitHub files are not supported in skills. If you would rather move a Gem yourself before then, there is no bulk option yet: download each knowledge file, create a skill, copy over the name, description and instructions, and upload the files one by one.

What a skill is in Gemini

Google’s page on creating and managing skills↗ (opens in a new tab) describes a skill as a set of reusable instructions and context that teaches Gemini how to do a specific task and what tools to use. The differences from a Gem are practical:

• You call a skill in any chat by typing a slash and picking it, and Gemini can also recognize on its own when a skill is relevant. You can combine several in one chat, where a Gem was one set-up per chat.
• A skill has a name in lowercase with hyphens, such as draft-customer-reply, a description and instructions. You can create one with Gemini’s help, from a blank template, from a prefilled template, or by uploading a SKILL.md file with optional reference files.
• Reference files are added only by uploading them with the skill, up to 100 MB in total. Word and Excel files and other binary formats are not supported; text, Markdown, PDF, images and code or data files are.
• Scripts in a skill cannot reach the internet. Skills can be switched off, edited, deleted for good, or downloaded as a .zip file.
• Requirements: 18 or older, a personal Google account, and Keep Activity on. The page says skills are not available for now on work or school accounts, and are still rolling out.

Where Google’s pages disagree or leave gaps

Read the transition page and the skills page side by side and four gaps show up, as of September 30, 2026:

• Sharing and Drive files: the transition page says skills will have the features people liked in Gems, including sharing and adding files from Google Drive. The skills page describes neither, and says reference files can only be uploaded. Treat both as promised, not available.
• Age: Gems are open from 13; skills require 18. Google does not say what happens to Gems belonging to people aged 13 to 17 on personal accounts.
• Keep Activity: skills require it. The transition page does not say what happens to Gems when it is off.
• Work accounts: Workspace users keep Gems until 2027, and skills are not yet available to them, so a team that mixes personal and work accounts will run both for a while.

How to prepare before November

1. List your Gems and delete the ones you no longer use, so fewer skills appear after the switch.
2. Check which ones depend on a tool skills will not support, such as Deep research or Canvas, and plan a different route for that step.
3. Download the knowledge files for any Gem that matters, and note which ones come from Drive, since uploaded copies do not update when the original changes.
4. Write a proper description for each. Google’s guide to writing effective skills↗ (opens in a new tab) asks for one or two sentences that say when the skill should be used, starting examples with “Use when…”, because that is what Gemini matches your request against.
5. If you share Gems with colleagues, tell them. Sharing for skills is described as coming, so for now each person may need their own copy.

name: draft-customer-reply
description: Drafts replies to customer support emails in our tone
and flags refund requests. Use when the user pastes a customer email,
asks for a reply to a complaint, or asks how to answer a support ticket.

Gems, skills and agentic work with Gemini

Skills are the same idea that runs through Google’s developer tools. Gemini CLI loads skills from folders with a SKILL.md file, in the open format covered in agent skills, so one written procedure can serve both the app and the terminal. The difference is reach: in Gemini CLI a skill can drive an agentic workflow that edits files and calls tools, while a skill in the Gemini app shapes a chat or a task. For the terminal side, see Gemini CLI best practices.

Where the work goes after the chat

A Gem or a skill makes Gemini answer consistently. It does not keep the list of what came out of the answers: the follow-ups, who has them and what state they are in. On fenbs that list is a board of tasks moving through To Do, Next Up, In Progress and Completed. Paste the action items a meeting-notes Gem produces into Add many and each line becomes a task, with History recording who changed what. The rules you would otherwise copy into a Gem, a skill and a Claude Project go once into the board’s AI context, which every connected assistant reads. Gemini connects over MCP, from the terminal with Gemini CLI or from the app as Gemini for project management describes. fenbs has no due dates, sprints or assignee field, so put dates and owners in the task’s note.