Migrate a Custom GPT to Gemini: Gems are becoming skills

From Google's Gemini Help pages, checked October 18, 2026.

How a Gem works today

In Gemini you choose Gems, then New Gem, enter a name and instructions, optionally add knowledge, and save. Knowledge can come from device uploads, Google Drive or NotebookLM notebooks. A preview box lets you test without saving. Gems can be shared with viewer or editor access.

The transition Google announced

• November 2026: Gems transition to skills for personal Google accounts.
• March 2027: Gems removed for Workspace business, enterprise and non-profit accounts.
• June 2027: Gems removed for Workspace education accounts.

Google says Gems will be recreated as skills automatically, including supported files, and that you can recreate one early by downloading its knowledge files and creating a skill with the same name, description and instructions. Skills are described as reusable custom instructions, up to 100 active at once.

Moving a Gem to a skill (Google's steps)

Google's page says there is no one-click Gem-to-skill conversion. To recreate manually: download the Gem's knowledge files into a folder named after the skill, create a skill manually in Settings and paste the Gem's name, description and instructions, then download the skill, add your files and upload it with Replace skill. Skill uploads need a SKILL.md at the root, a lowercase hyphenated name and no more than 100 MB total; supported files include TXT, MD, JSON, CSV, HTML, PDF and images, but not DOCX or XLSX. See the step-by-step page.

What we could not verify

Whether Gems or skills can call external tools (the pages we read do not say). Treat Gemini as a place for instructions and files, not Actions. Steps: general process; compare Gems, Projects and GPTs.