While several Redditors spotted the Google banner on the Gems Manager page, I don’t see the banner on my own Gemini account. I contacted Google for more details.
As shown in screenshots posted on Reddit, the banner says, “Starting November 17, 2026, we’ll start automatically migrating your gems into skills,” adding that users “will be able to use them.” [their] Gems until they migrate.” A “Learn More” button leads to an empty Google support page.
Basically, Gemini Gems allows you to create custom Gemini chatbots, with their own custom names and detailed instructions on what they should do and how they should act, as well as upload files to use as knowledge bases. Once built, you can chat with a Gem like you would Gemini, except your Gem can have its own abilities and personality.
Skills, on the other hand, are custom instructions for Gemini applications, specifically Spark, the personal AI assistant that lives in a separate tab in the Gemini interface. While gems are launched within your own chatbot environment, Spark abilities can be invoked during any Spark chat, usually starting with “/”. Spark can also invoke a skill on its own if it determines that the skill is relevant to a particular task at hand.
In addition to invoking skills during Spark chats, you can also add skills to scheduled tasks or even integrate skills within other skills. Those skills can lead to some powerful automations, but they’re not exactly like the custom Gemini chatbots you can activate using Gems, and it’s unclear exactly how the migrated Gems will work once they become skills.
On another note, Skills currently only work with Spark, which requires a paid subscription to Google AI (like Google AI Pro for $20 a month), while Gems are available to Google users for free. It’s entirely possible that the skills will be available in standard Gemini chats once November 17 arrives, but we’re still waiting for more details.
