Gemini Skills Replaces Gems: Turn Your Best Proposal Into a Reusable Skill

Google released the Gemini Skills feature on September 30, 2026, and began rolling it out in the Gemini app on October 13. Skills are essentially a set of "reusable, custom instructions" stored in the open SKILL.md format. Users can invoke them by typing @ plus the skill name in the Ask Gemini panel in Gmail, Docs, Slides, Drive, or Chat, and Workspace Studio flows can use them too.

However, the Workspace-side Skills that were originally scheduled to launch on October 12 (Rapid Release track) and October 19 (Scheduled Release track) have been delayed, with no restoration date set. The rollout of Skills in the Gemini app is expected to be complete by mid-November. You may not have noticed that the two sides don't interoperate—skills created in Workspace need to be recreated in the Gemini app.

That said, Gems are exiting the stage. As of November 17, they've been moved into Settings; enterprise accounts will be unable to create, edit, or use Gems starting as early as March 1, 2027. Workspace Studio already prohibits adding new "Ask a Gem" steps, and existing steps remain usable until the deadline.

What It Means for Small Businesses

Imagine a 12-person architecture studio. Every proposal goes through one partner for rewriting to ensure consistent structure, fee logic, and tone. That knowledge exists only in one person's head. Skills give it a place to live: a one-page instruction sheet, a template, and two excellent past proposals, invoked directly with @ in a draft document. Junior architects draft in the studio format, and the partner reviews rather than rewrites.

Another advantage of Skills is readability: anyone with permission can see what a skill tells Gemini, change a line, and every subsequent draft will follow it. This makes the Gems deadline a good opportunity to rewrite rather than simply copy—a Gem written hastily last year rarely matches how you work today.

There's another reason to migrate this work to Workspace now: personal Gemini accounts are tightening up. Starting October 9, individual users without a subscription can only use the Flash-Lite model. Using Skills on a personal account requires turning on Keep Activity, and once enabled, some chats may be subject to human review, and Google advises against entering confidential information. In Workspace, Google states that business content won't be human-reviewed and won't be used to train models outside your domain without permission. Client proposals belong there.

Keep Activity and Human Review: Google's Keep Activity is a setting in the Gemini app that, when enabled, saves your conversation history with Gemini (typically retained for 18 months) to improve models and allows trained human reviewers to view some conversations—account-identifying information is stripped before review, but the conversation text itself may still be read. For personal accounts, using advanced features like Skills often requires enabling this setting; for Workspace business accounts, Google promises that in-domain content won't be human-reviewed and won't be used to train models outside that domain without permission. This is why the original article emphasizes that client proposals should live in Workspace rather than personal accounts.

How to Set It Up

Setting up Skills requires a step-by-step approach:

1. Check your subscription plan. Google's comparison shows that Gemini features in Docs, Slides, and Drive are available in Business Standard and Plus, but not Starter. The Docs route below requires Standard or Plus; if you're on Starter, build skills in Workspace Studio and use them in Gmail.

2. Check the admin side. In the Admin console, look at Account settings → Preferences to see your release track. Skills are enabled under Apps → Google Workspace → Workspace Studio → Skills, and changes may take up to 24 hours to take effect. Google's admin page still refers to Skills as a Gemini Beta feature. Since the Workspace rollout is paused, they may not appear for now.

3. Write the one-page description first. On one page, describe how proposals are done: sections, fee logic, tone, what must never be included. Also gather the template and two excellent past proposals.

4. Build the skill in Docs. Once Skills reaches your domain, open a Doc, click Ask Gemini → Tools → Skill builder, and describe the skill using your page. Review what it drafts, click Make this skill in Studio, then Turn on.

5. Share it. Open the skill in Studio, click Share, and select My organization. Copies include reference files and linked flows, and anyone with the link can see the creator's email address.

6. Test with a real case. Open Ask Gemini in a Doc, type @, select the skill, run it on a proposal you've already sent, and compare the two.

7. Rebuild the important Gems. List the Gems your team uses, keep the two or three worth keeping, and manually recreate them as Skills. At the deadline, remaining Gems become draft skills in the Gemini app, not in Workspace.

SKILL.md and Skill Builder: SKILL.md is the open file format Google defines for Gemini Skills—essentially a plain-text Markdown file containing the skill's metadata (name, description) and the instruction body for Gemini, and it can also reference template files or Workspace Studio flows. Because it's plain text, skills can be version-controlled, reviewed, and edited directly, which is why the original article says "anyone with permission can see what a skill tells Gemini, change a line, and every subsequent draft will follow it." Skill Builder, meanwhile, is the guided tool in the Ask Gemini panel in Docs: you paste or type that page of description, it generates a skill draft for you to review, and then you can click "Make this skill in Studio" to formally publish it to Workspace Studio.

Costs, Limits, and Risks

On annual plans, Business Starter is $7 per user per month, Standard is $14, and Plus is $22; flexible plans cost more. A 12-person studio on the annual Standard plan pays $168 per month. When viewed from Israel, the pricing page shows euros: annual Standard is €13.60. Google lists Skills in all three Business plans.

Notable limitations:

• The apps Google lists as supporting Skills are Gmail, Docs, Slides, Drive, and Chat—not Sheets.
• The Gemini sidebar in Gmail, Docs, and Drive supports Hebrew, but Gemini in Workspace Studio doesn't list that language. Test before trusting a skill with Hebrew proposals.
• Workspace users under 18 can't create or share skills.
• Skills can only see what their user can access: by default that includes Drive and the web, and if checked, also Gmail, Chat, and Calendar. If someone can't open a file, Gemini won't retrieve it for them.

The bigger risk is quality. A skill encodes judgment only as well as the one-page description behind it: if the description is vague, every draft will be vague in the same way, just faster.

Workspace Studio: Workspace Studio is Google's no-code automation and AI skill management platform for enterprises, located at Admin console → Apps → Google Workspace → Workspace Studio. It allows admins and users to create, share, enable, and disable skills, and to connect skills to apps like Gmail and Docs as well as automation flows (such as "Ask a Gem" steps). Skills are managed centrally in Studio, permissions are controlled via Share → My organization, and copies include reference files and linked flows. The release tracks (Rapid/Scheduled), the Skills toggle, and the 24-hour activation delay mentioned in the original article are all configured at the Studio level.

Should You Do It Now?

If a recurring document still flows through only one person, do it now: write that one-page description today starting from step 3, and build it in the Gemini app once Skills reaches your account. Build one skill, not five.

If you need to use skills in Docs and Gmail (which is most useful for proposals), wait: Google hasn't set a new date for Workspace. Gems themselves aren't urgent: they're usable until at least March 2027.

If no document in your business depends on one person's judgment, skip it. For work that anyone on the team can do well, skills add little value.

What I'd do this week: Write one page on how your proposals should be done, gather the template and two good past proposals, and once Skills reaches your domain, use Skill Builder to turn them into one skill. Share it with whoever drafts the most. Next Friday, compare their drafts with what you used to rewrite, and count how many edits you still need to make.

One-line Summary

Google launches Gemini Skills to replace Gems, but the Workspace rollout is delayed and the two sides don't interoperate, so small businesses should standardize their person-dependent core documents early.

Paragraph Summary

Google released Gemini Skills (reusable custom instructions in SKILL.md format) to replace the soon-to-be-retired Gems, but the Workspace rollout has been delayed since October, the Gemini app side is expected to complete by mid-November, and the two sides don't interoperate—skills created in Workspace must be rebuilt in the Gemini app. Gems will be discontinued for enterprise accounts by March 1, 2027 at the latest. For small businesses, Skills can make proposal standards that exist only in one person's head explicit, but you need to check your subscription plan (only Business Standard/Plus supports skills in Docs, Slides, and Drive), admin settings, and language support. Using Skills on personal accounts requires enabling Keep Activity and comes with human review, so client proposals should live in Workspace. The article recommends writing down your proposal standards and gathering templates this week, building one skill once Skills arrives, and rebuilding important Gems in advance.