Google is shutting down Gems, the feature that let Gemini users build their own task-specific AI agents, and replacing it with something called skills.
Gems let people create narrow, purpose-built assistants inside Gemini, each one handling a specific task. Google is retiring that feature in favor of skills, a new approach to task handling built into the assistant itself. The move comes as competitors bet on all-in-one AI agents rather than a library of narrow bots. Meta's Muse and Instinct, both broad agents rather than task-specific tools, are the products pushing that shift.
The change says something about where Google thinks AI agents are headed: fewer bespoke bots, more general-purpose ones that handle whatever comes up. It puts Gemini in the same lane as Meta's all-in-one approach, rather than the DIY agent-building model Gems represented. That's a bet that people want one capable assistant, not a shelf of task-specific ones.
Whether skills genuinely deliver that generalism, or just centralize the same narrow capabilities under one roof, remains to be seen.