Google Is Replacing Gemini Gems With Skills: What Workspace Businesses Need to Do Before March 2027

What Google announced

On September 30, 2026, Google announced skills as the replacement for Gems in the Gemini app and Google Workspace. A skill is a saved set of instructions, such as your brand voice, a proposal checklist, or a vendor review rubric, that you can call up in any Gemini chat instead of retyping the same prompt or switching to a separate Gem.

Three things set skills apart from Gems:

• They work inline. You type / (soon @) and the skill’s name in any chat, rather than opening a dedicated Gem, according to Google’s help page on the transition.
• They stack. You can combine several skills in one prompt. Google’s example for business users pairs a “vendor evaluator” skill with an “executive email drafter” skill to analyze vendors and draft a recommendation in one step.
• Gemini can apply them automatically when it recognizes that an active skill fits what you asked for.

Skills also follow the open Agent Skills format: a folder with a SKILL.md file. That means instructions you have written for other AI tools in that format can be imported, and skills you build in Gemini can be downloaded as a .zip file.

What’s delayed: skills inside Workspace apps

Google planned two rollouts. Skills in the Gemini app (gemini.google.com and the mobile and Mac apps) began on October 13 and are expected to finish by mid-November, for all Workspace customers and personal Google accounts.

Skills inside Workspace itself, in Workspace Studio and the Gemini side panel in Workspace apps, were due to start reaching some business accounts on October 5. On October 13, Google posted an update saying those rollouts are “slightly delayed” and listing skills in Workspace as “delayed until further notice.” Google’s admin help page for the skills setting currently says skills in Workspace are only available to customers enrolled in the Gemini Beta program.

If you have read that skills arrived in Workspace on October 5, that was the original plan. As of October 17, most business accounts won’t see skills in Workspace apps yet, and Google hasn’t published a new date.

Key dates for business and enterprise accounts

Dates for Workspace business and enterprise accounts, from Google’s Workspace Updates posts. Education accounts follow no sooner than June 1, 2027; personal Google accounts start in November 2026.

Google says it will share details of the automatic migration with admins at least 30 days before it starts.

Gems vs. skills: what’s different

Two limits are worth knowing before you move anything. You can have up to 100 active skills at a time, and files added to a skill must be plain text, PDFs, or images. Word and Excel files (.docx, .xlsx) aren’t supported, according to Google’s guide to creating and managing skills.

Step 1List the Gems your team relies on

Most businesses don’t know how many Gems they have, because individuals create them. Ask each team to list the Gems they use regularly, with five details for each:

• Its name and what it’s for
• Who owns it, and whether that person still works with you
• Any knowledge files it uses
• Who it’s shared with
• Whether a Workspace Studio flow uses it

Most lists will be short. The ones that matter are the Gems people open every week and the ones built into flows.

Step 2Back up instructions and knowledge files

Google will convert leftover Gems automatically, and says converted skills keep their names, descriptions, instructions, and knowledge files. A backup is still worth having: Google’s own admin guidance on the transition recommends copying instructions and re-uploading files by hand so you can verify your prompts before the automatic migration.

For each Gem on your list, open it in the Gemini web app, copy its instructions into a document, and download its knowledge files. If any of those files are Word or Excel documents, save PDF or CSV versions now, because skills don’t accept .docx or .xlsx uploads.

Step 3Fix Workspace Studio flows that use “Ask a Gem”

This is the one change already in effect: you can no longer add “Ask a Gem” steps to flows. Existing flows keep running until March 2027, then stop. You don’t need skills access to fix them. Google’s Workspace Studio guide recommends replacing each “Ask a Gem” step with a standard “Ask Gemini” step:

1. Open the flow in Workspace Studio and copy the prompt from the “Ask a Gem” step.
2. Add an “Ask Gemini” step and move it above the “Ask a Gem” step.
3. Paste the prompt into the new step.
4. Once the new step works, delete the “Ask a Gem” step.
5. Update any later steps that used the old step’s output so they use the new one.

When skills reach your Workspace account, you can attach a skill to the “Ask Gemini” step to bring back the customized behavior your Gem provided.

Step 4Recreate your most-used Gems as skills

Once skills appear in your Gemini app, you can move key Gems over early instead of waiting for the automatic conversion. Google’s step-by-step instructions come down to three steps:

1. Open the Gem in the Gemini web app and download its knowledge files into a folder named like the skill, in lowercase with hyphens (for example, vendor-evaluator).
2. Open the Skills page, choose Create manually, and paste in the Gem’s name, description, and instructions.
3. To add files, download the new skill as a .zip, put its SKILL.md file in the folder with your files, and use Replace skill to upload the folder.

You can also ask Gemini to build a skill for you in a regular chat. Google’s best-practice advice is to say when the skill should be used, keep the instructions short, and include an example of the output you expect.

Create a skill named vendor-evaluator based on the instructions below.
Use it automatically when I ask you to compare vendors, review a quote, or shortlist suppliers.
Keep the instructions concise, and add one short example of the output I expect: a table of the options, the main risks, and a one-line recommendation.

Instructions:
[paste your Gem's instructions here]

Remember that skills don’t sync between the Gemini app and Workspace apps yet. When skills reach Workspace, create the ones you need there separately in Workspace Studio.

Step 5Admins: check settings and tell your team the dates

• Know your release track. New Workspace features reach Rapid Release domains before Scheduled Release domains. You can check or change your track in the Admin console.
• Find the skills setting. When skills reach your account, admins control them under Apps > Google Workspace > Workspace Studio > Skills > Create and use skills. Turning skills off also blocks skills people have already made. Google says there are no admin controls for skills in the Gemini app.
• Share the dates. Google recommends telling users about the transition and the key date for your edition: no sooner than March 1, 2027, for business and enterprise accounts.
• Watch for the migration notice. Google says admins will get details at least 30 days before the automatic migration begins.

Common questions

Updated October 17, 2026. Google says it will share a new timeline for skills in Workspace apps once it’s confirmed. We’ll update this article when it does.

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