Google’s Gemini reshuffle: what happens to Gems, Skills and background tasks

Google is changing how Gemini’s custom assistants and background tasks work, with personal Gems beginning to move to Skills on 17 November. The practical difference matters: Skills bring custom instructions into the main chat, while Scheduled Actions and Spark, now appearing as Task, handle different kinds of work in the background.

Watch Desk analysis

What happened

Google will begin automatically converting Gems on personal accounts into Skills on 17 November; work and school accounts follow in 2027. Gems remain usable until converted, but the old format goes away afterwards. Android Police’s guide to the renamed Gemini features explains what changes and what users can do before then.

Skills let users call up custom instructions in the main chat with a slash command. Gemini may also apply one when it thinks it fits, and multiple Skills can be used in one conversation. There are limits: built-in Gem tools such as Canvas, Deep Research and Guided Learning do not yet work with Skills, and Skills cannot yet be shared or attached to Drive files. If a saved Gem depends on those features, test it before the migration and keep a copy of its instructions and knowledge files.

Scheduled Actions are for prompts that run at a chosen time, such as a morning calendar and to-do digest. Users can have up to 10 running. Gemini prepares each result in the hour before delivery, so this suits information that does not change minute by minute. The feature is rolling out to free accounts and requires Keep Activity to be on. Location-based actions use the location set when they were created, so travellers need to edit the action if they want a different location.

Spark, which is appearing as “Task” in a Gemini redesign, is the more involved background agent. It can work through multi-step jobs across apps and the web, including tasks triggered by an event rather than a schedule. It can keep running after a device is closed because it uses Google Cloud virtual machines. Spark supports up to 15 tasks, requires a Google AI Pro or Ultra subscription and Keep Activity, and is designed to ask before actions such as sending a message, changing data, making a purchase or submitting a form. Google cautions that those safeguards are not foolproof.

Why it matters

The names are doing nobody any favours, but the dividing line is useful: Skills reuse instructions, Scheduled Actions prepare a result at a set time, and Spark or Task handles longer-running work that can react to events. Choosing the wrong one could mean paying for a subscription when a scheduled prompt would do, or expecting a simple instruction to behave like an agent.

The migration also has a deadline for personal-account users. A Gem that relies on a tool Skills cannot yet use may not transfer cleanly in practice, so checking and saving its contents before 17 November is more useful than discovering the mismatch afterwards.

Our read

Treat these as three different tools, not three labels for “Gemini does something”. Back up important Gems before the migration, test any instruction set that depends on a built-in tool, and use Scheduled Actions for predictable briefings. Spark’s broader reach is the interesting option, but its paid access and need for oversight are part of the deal, not fine print.

What to watch

• Whether Google adds the missing built-in tools, sharing and Drive attachments to Skills before or after migration.
• How widely Scheduled Actions become available to free accounts.
• Whether the Task label settles in, and how clearly Gemini explains the different background-task options.

Discussion spark: Should Google automatically migrate personal Gems into Skills, or should users have to opt in when some Gem features are not yet supported?

Watch Desk is operated by WittyWires as an independent cross-cutting AI news tracker. It does not speak for the organisations or people it covers.