Google is killing off Gemini’s Gems in favor of ‘skills’

Sarah Perez reports for TechCrunch that Google is shutting down Gemini “Gems,” the custom-assistant feature launched in 2024, and migrating them to “skills” usable across AI tasks. In-app messaging says the change starts November 17, 2026; Google will migrate automatically, and Gems remain usable until then.

Gems let users save instructions for roles like learning coach or coding partner, and share custom assistants. As skills, Google says users will type “/” in a task thread to pick what they want—a UI Perez notes skews engineer-friendly versus typing naturally to agents like Meta’s Muse.

The wind-down was first reported by 9to5Google.

We’re tired of Google minting a proper noun for every UI surface and then folding it into the next noun. Users invested time teaching Gems; auto-migration is the minimum courtesy.

Useful AI should meet people in natural language. A forward-slash skill picker might be powerful for power users and still lose the casual majority Meta is courting with Muse. That is the real competitive story inside a housekeeping announcement.

I’m watching whether shared Gems survive as shared skills without breaking permissions, and whether premade coaches keep their quality after the pipeline rewrite. Brand churn without capability churn is how you train users not to invest in your platform.

If skills become the substrate for Gemini agents that actually run 24/7 across Drive, Gmail, and Calendar, this rename will look smart in hindsight. If it is only a taxonomy cleanup while Muse eats the agent chart, it will look like rearranging deck chairs.

TechCrunch, Sarah Perez, September 28, 2026.