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Google is destroying Gems. Gemini Skills replace them
Gemini Skills save a repeat job once, and several can stack in one conversation.
Google is rolling out Skills in Gemini and plans to replace Gems with them.
A Skill packages reusable instructions for a recurring job. Instead of digging up an old prompt, pasting it into a new chat, adding your brand rules and explaining the output format again, you save the process once and reuse it whenever that work comes up.
The bigger change is composition. Gemini can recognize when a Skill is relevant, and several Skills can stack in one conversation. A content workflow might combine:
- A brand-voice Skill
- A source-verification Skill
- A social-description Skill
- A claim-review Skill
- A platform-formatting Skill
That is more flexible than one giant assistant with every instruction loaded all the time. Each Skill owns one responsibility, and Gemini activates the mix the job needs.
Skills can include reference material such as text files, PDFs and images. Google says sharing Skills and adding files from Google Drive and Gemini Notebook is coming in the following weeks.
To start, pick one task you repeat every week. Write down the trigger, inputs, exact output structure, quality checks, examples and when the Skill should stop and ask. Test it on five different inputs before adding another.
The catch: Skills do not support every Gemini feature yet. Google lists Canvas, Deep Research, video creation, music creation and several other Gem tools as unsupported. Imported Skills can contain instructions, files and possibly scripts, so review their contents and source first.
