A Gem is a custom version of Gemini: a running coach, a writing editor, a career guide, or any expert you define once and reuse whenever you need it. Instead of retyping the same role and context at the start of every chat, you save them into a Gem and revisit that assistant in one click. This guide explains what Gems are, how to build one, and what happens as Google replaces them with skills.
The short version is that a Gem is Gemini plus persistent instructions. You tell it what it is, how it should respond, and what it knows, and every conversation with it starts from those instructions. Google introduced Gems at I/O in 2024, launched them to Advanced, Business and Enterprise users, and brought them to personal accounts and Workspace. Now Google is converting Gems into skills, so this guide covers both the tool and the transition.
What a Google Gem Is
Google’s own description is simple: Gems are custom experts for any task within Gemini, designed to help you exactly how you want it to. You give a Gem unique context, and you can revisit this exact AI expert whenever you need it, rather than rebuilding the context in every new conversation.
The running coach is Google’s own example. Create a Gem to act as a positive, upbeat running coach who has made a training plan just for you, and every time you open that Gem, it is that coach, with that plan, in that tone. The same pattern works for anything repetitive: a writing coach for your run-on sentences, a brainstorming partner, a study companion.
What makes a Gem different from a good prompt is persistence. A prompt is instructions you type each time; a Gem is instructions you save once. That difference is small in a single chat and enormous across a month of chats, which is why Google’s product lead frames Gems as the answer to prompts people keep rewriting.
Start With the Premade Gems
You do not have to build from scratch. Google ships premade Gems, and its launch list names five: Brainstormer, Career guide, Coding partner, Learning coach and Writing editor. You will find them in Gemini’s left-hand side panel, listed under Gems, or in the Gem manager in the same panel.
If a premade Gem is close but not quite right, copy it instead of starting over. Making a copy works like copying a document: you get the pre-filled instructions, you can rewrite or add to them, and you can rename the Gem so you know it is your custom version. No pasting required.
Try a premade Gem for a week before building your own. The premades teach you what good Gem instructions look like, and the one you use most is usually the one worth customising first, because its gaps are the gaps you actually feel.
Create Your Own Gem
Creating a Gem takes a name and a set of instructions. In the Gemini web app, open Gems, create a new one, write what it should do and how it should respond, preview it with a test prompt in the box on the right, and save it. A Gem created in the web app appears in the Gemini mobile app and in the Gemini side panel in Google Workspace, so it follows you across devices.
To create and use Gems with a personal Google Account, you must be 13 or over, or the applicable age in your country. Gems also appear in the Workspace side panel, the same panel our Gmail AI guide covers for Gemini in Gmail, which means a Gem you build on the web is available where you already work.
If you are struggling with instructions, let Gemini write them. After a few words describing your goal, the rewrite feature expands them into more comprehensive instructions for most topics, taking a few seconds. Google’s product team says people love this feature not only because it crafts better instructions, but because it teaches what good instructions look like. If you do not like the rewrite, undo it or edit it.
Preview before you save, with three prompts: one typical task, one edge case, and one request the Gem should refuse or redirect. The preview box on the right exists for exactly this, and three minutes of testing there saves weeks of correcting a Gem you already rely on.
Give It Knowledge With Files
Instructions tell a Gem how to behave; files tell it what to know. After you add instructions, you can upload files under Knowledge to give your Gem more context or to reference specific documents in your chats with it. A style guide, a product document, a set of notes: whatever the Gem should consult, you attach it once.
By default, the Gem’s responses can include citations to your knowledge files. If you would rather it did not, select Disable knowledge citations, which also disables citations for files uploaded in your Gem chats. You may need to scroll down to find the Knowledge section, and you can edit a Gem later to remove a file or add more.
Files also travel with the Gem’s purpose. A career Gem grounded in your CV answers differently from one grounded in a job description, and swapping the files is often faster than rewriting the instructions. Think of instructions as the job description and files as the briefing pack.
Write Instructions That Work
Specific instructions beat general ones. Google’s examples make the point: telling a Career guide Gem to talk to you like a hiring manager at a law firm produces a different, more useful rehearsal than telling it to help with interviews. The role, the setting and the standard all belong in the instructions.
Roleplay is one of the strongest uses. You can tell a Gem to act like a new hire with lots of questions so you can practise your responses before training real employees, or use it to prepare for a challenging conversation with a friend or colleague by doing a test run first. The Gem holds the character; you practise against it.
The writing coach example shows the everyday version. A team member who writes in run-on sentences built a Gem to simplify their writing and break up long sentences. Instead of rewriting that prompt and pasting text for review each time, they now use the Gem in one click. Repetition is the signal: if you have typed an instruction more than twice, it belongs in a Gem.
Think of Gems as Teammates
Google’s product lead suggests thinking of Gems like teammates for each area of your life. Her own set includes work Gems, a Doc advisor and an Email simplifier, alongside personal ones: a dinner recipe Gem that suggests ideas based on what is in her fridge, and a reading Gem that analyses her interests and offers suggestions.
She even gives them personalities: the fridge Gem acts like a French sous chef, and the reading Gem hears about her day and finds a book to fit her mood. The lesson is not the whimsy; it is that a Gem works best when it has a narrow job and a clear character, rather than trying to be a general assistant with a different name.
Name each Gem for its job, not for its technology. “Email simplifier” tells you when to open it; “My custom assistant 3” does not. When your Gem list grows past a handful, the names are the interface, and a job-named list is one you can navigate without thinking.
Fun counts too. Google’s examples include a dinosaur birthday planner that takes on the character of a T-Rex to help plan a kid’s birthday party, complete with telling the children a dinosaur helped plan it. A Gem that delights you is a Gem you will actually open, and use is what makes the setup time pay off.
Five Gems Worth Building
First, the writing coach: a Gem that simplifies your writing and breaks up long sentences, fed with a few samples of your own prose so it learns your habits rather than generic rules. Open it whenever you draft, and editing becomes a pass through a familiar editor instead of a fresh negotiation.
Second, the career rehearsal partner: a Gem told to act like a hiring manager in your field, so you can practise interview answers against a consistent interrogator instead of a chatbot that forgets the premise halfway through. Change the firm, the role or the difficulty, and the rehearsal changes with it.
Third, the fridge forager: a Gem that suggests dinner ideas from what is in your fridge, with a character if you like. It is a small job, but it is the kind of job you repeat weekly, and that repetition is exactly what Gems are for.
Fourth, the study partner: a Gem grounded in your course materials that quizzes you, breaks down complex topics, and stays in tutor mode instead of drifting into general chat. Teachers can build the same pattern from Classroom templates like Study partner and Quiz me.
Fifth, the email simplifier: a Gem that takes long threads and returns the decision, the deadline and the action items. It is Google’s own product lead’s example, and it works because email triage is the same task every day with different text.
Gems vs a Notebook
It is easy to confuse Gems with Gemini Notebook, since Google Classroom offers both, but they solve different problems. A notebook is a research space built around a set of sources: you gather documents, and the notebook helps you explore, summarise and question them. A Gem is a role: you define an expert, and it applies that expertise to whatever you bring it.
The numbers show the difference in Classroom. A notebook supports up to 50 source documents, built for deep research across a large set. A Gem supports up to 10 source documents, built for a focused briefing pack behind a single job. If your need is “understand these fifty papers,” that is a notebook. If it is “act as my editor every time I write,” that is a Gem.
Use them together when the work calls for it: research in a notebook, then hand the findings to a Gem that turns them into the format you need, whether that is a summary, a plan or a draft. The notebook holds the knowledge; the Gem holds the job.
Sharing and Limits
Gems can be shared. A Gem shared with you is not automatically added to your Gem manager, but once you open it and interact with it, it appears under My Gems. That makes Gems a practical way for teams and teachers to distribute a tuned assistant without everyone rebuilding it.
There are limits worth knowing. For now, Gems cannot be used with Gemini Live, so a Gem is a text-chat tool, not a voice companion. The Learning coach premade Gem does not currently support language learning. And experimental Gems, which let you try early-stage Gemini features, vary in quality and availability by design.
Experimental Gems deserve a deliberate approach: try them, leave feedback through the channels Google provides, and do not build a daily workflow on one. Their purpose is to test early features and shape them, and features that are testing may change or disappear without the notice a finished product gets.
Teachers have a dedicated path: in Google Classroom, educators can create Gems, including from templates like Study partner, Quiz me, Brainstorm partner and Real-world connector, and attach them to classwork. A single Gem can be used across multiple classes, and Classroom Gems support up to 10 source documents.
Gems Are Becoming Skills
Here is the part that changes the guide’s tense. Google is converting Gems into skills, a newer format for teaching Gemini how to handle a specific type of task. Existing Gems are being recreated as skills, so the work of writing instructions and attaching files is not lost, but the Gem itself, as a separate named assistant in the sidebar, is going away.
Google’s own education pages give the clearest dates. Gems assigned to a student’s personal account through Classroom stop being accessible on November 17, 2026, and for Workspace for Education users, Gems will no longer be available from June 1, 2027 or later, with existing Classroom Gems converting into skills in a draft state, keeping their name, description, instructions and knowledge files, and needing manual activation before use.
For personal accounts, Google’s in-app notices reported in September 2026 put the general changeover at November 17, 2026 as well, with Gems automatically converting to skills and remaining usable until then. The practical advice is the same in every case: keep a copy of your Gem’s name, description, full instructions and knowledge files somewhere safe, so that whatever the new format requires, your work survives the move intact.
The skills that replace Gems work differently in one important way: instead of opening a separate assistant, you pick a skill inside a conversation. The instructions-and-files idea survives; the sidebar of named experts does not. If you are building a Gem today, build it as instructions and files that can travel, not as something that only makes sense inside the Gem format.
Background
Gems began at I/O 2024 as custom experts inside Gemini, launched to Advanced, Business and Enterprise users, and grew into premade assistants, copied customs and knowledge files. Their successor, skills, keeps the core idea, instructions plus files that teach Gemini a task your way, and drops the separate-assistant packaging. The lesson outlives Gems: write the instruction once, save it, and let every future chat start from it. Browse our topics index.
Sources: Google Blog: “Gems tips”; Google Help: “Use Gems help”.
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