Google introduces Skills in Gemini to replace Gems
What happened
On 1 October 2026, The Decoder reported that Google had launched Skills globally in Gemini chats to replace Gems. Users can invoke Skills by typing a slash followed by a name. Their format originates from Anthropic and is offered as an open standard, with text, PDFs and images supported as reference material. Gemini can also generate Skills from past conversations and run them automatically when relevant, while multiple Skills can be chained together. The report did not specify when Gems would be retired or how existing data would be migrated.
Written by AI from the reports · updated 20 h ago
Timeline
Follow the reports to see the event from each side.
- The DecoderGoogle drops Gems for Skills, joining OpenAI and Anthropic in the shift to agent-ready prompt formats
Google has launched Skills globally in Gemini chat, replacing Gems with detailed prompts tailored to specific tasks. Users can invoke a Skill by typing a slash followed by its name. The format originated at Anthropic and is available as an open standard, with text, PDFs and images supported as reference material. Gemini can also generate Skills from past conversations, run them automatically when they match, and chain multiple Skills together.
Heat of this event
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