Google Retires Gemini's Gems Feature, Replaces It With Slash-Command 'Skills'

Google is shutting down Gems, the Gemini feature that let users build custom AI assistants for specific tasks, and replacing it with a new system called "skills." The transition begins November 17, 2026, according to a notice Google is displaying inside the Gemini app.

Google says the change will be automatic: existing Gems will be migrated to skills without requiring user action, and the underlying work users put into building their Gems won't be lost. Gems will remain usable in their current form until the November 17 cutoff.

What's changing

Launched in 2024, Gems allowed users to create persistent, task-specific AI assistants so they wouldn't have to repeat instructions in every conversation. Google shipped several pre-made Gems, including a learning coach, brainstorming assistant, career guide, coding partner, and editor. Users could also build their own — a running coach, nutritionist, or vacation planner, for example — and share them with others.

Under the new skills format, users invoke a specific skill by typing a forward slash ("/") within a task thread, then selecting the skill they want to apply. This is a departure from Gems, which functioned as standalone, brandable assistants with their own icons and navigation placement inside the Gemini app.

The change was first reported by 9to5Google over the weekend before Google confirmed it through in-app messaging.

Why it matters now

The move comes as competitors push toward simpler, all-in-one AI agents. Meta has been rolling out products like Muse and Instinct, which let users accomplish varied tasks through plain text input rather than requiring them to select a pre-built assistant. Google's slash-command interface for skills — a pattern more familiar to developers and power users than casual consumers — stands in contrast to that direction.

This is not the first time Google has consolidated or rebranded a standalone AI feature inside Gemini. The company has a history of launching products with distinct names, icons, and navigation slots, then folding them into other features later. Critics have pointed to this pattern as a recurring issue with Google's product strategy, predating the AI era — the company has previously run multiple overlapping messaging and communication apps simultaneously.

What this means

Google's decision to fold Gems into skills signals an acknowledgment that its assistant-branding strategy inside Gemini was getting cluttered rather than more useful. But the replacement doesn't obviously solve the underlying usability problem: a slash-command interface for selecting skills is arguably a step back in accessibility compared to natural-language interaction, which is where rivals like Meta are focused. For users who invested time building custom Gems, the automatic migration is a low-friction transition. For Google, the bigger question is whether repeatedly renaming and restructuring Gemini's feature set — rather than settling on a stable, intuitive interaction model — is undermining the product's appeal to mainstream users rather than helping it.