By Billy G.R. · 2 October 2026
Checked 2026-10-02. Author: Billy G.R. Retail prices move; the hardware catalog stores the Amazon snapshot, not a promise of stock.
Claim. Google’s 30 September 2026 post says Gemini skills are replacing Gems. Skills were already in Gemini Spark and were rolling out to Gemini chat.
Method. blog.google post by Deven Tokuno, “Let skills in Gemini tackle your most repetitive tasks.”
As of.
Claim. The same post says Gems support will be removed starting in November for personal accounts, in March 2027 for Workspace business, enterprise, and nonprofit, and in June 2027 for Workspace education. Personal Gems migrate to skills. Gems by Google Labs do not.
Method. Quoted timeline from that post. The November line does not print a year; the post date is 30 September 2026.
As of.
Claim. A local custom agent with a saved prompt fits a 7–14B Q4 (6.2–10.4 GB) and is more reliable at 27B (18.2 GB).
Method. Site formula. Open WebUI presets and Ollama modelfiles are the local analogue, not a Gemini import.
As of.
Methodology — parameter math, quantization bytes, and the source list.
Google is renaming the “saved custom Gemini” idea. The 30 September 2026 post Let skills in Gemini tackle your most repetitive tasks says skills replace Gems. You save instructions once and invoke them with a slash. You can stack skills and attach text, PDF, or image reference files. Skills were already in Gemini Spark and were rolling out to Gemini chat globally, with Workspace business, enterprise, nonprofit, and education customers “in the coming weeks” from that date. The productivity overview is at gemini.google/overview/productivity/. This is a Google cloud feature. It does not run on your GPU.
Support for Gems goes away on a staggered calendar. Personal accounts: starting in November. The sentence does not print “2026,” but the post is dated 30 September 2026, so that November is the next one. Workspace business, enterprise, and nonprofit: March 2027. Workspace education: June 2027. Google said existing Gems migrate into skills when Gems go away. A footnote says Gems by Google Labs turn down on the personal-account timing and do not migrate. Opal, their mini-app experiment, turns down with the personal change. I am not summarizing a help-center migration click-path I did not open. Use the help center link from the post if you need the buttons.
If your bookmark still says Gems, you are on a product Google has scheduled for removal. Do not publish a new guide titled only “Gems.” Skills is the name.
A skill is a prompt, optional files, and a trigger. Locally that is:
You will not import a Gemini skill file and have it run. You rewrite the instructions. You also lose Gemini’s account memory and Workspace file picker. What you gain is a prompt that still works on a plane, against a model you can name.
A character-style bot does not need 70B. It needs a model that follows instructions. Formula at Q4: params × 0.6 + 2. Reference files you paste become context, which the calculator models better than a fixed table.
| Local skill | Model | Memory |
|---|---|---|
| A tone prompt, short replies | K2-Horizon-7B | 6.2 GB. A 12 GB machine is plenty. |
| A prompt plus a long PDF | 14B Q4 or 27B Q4 | 10.4 GB or 18.2 GB, then KV cache for the file. 24 GB if the PDF is the point. |
| Several skills that call tools | One shared 27B, not a model per skill | 18.2 GB once. See the CrewAI page for why copies are a trap. |
Gemini Skills need no local VRAM. The local preset does. A Mac mini M5 Pro 24 GB (B0HGGHNQY6, $1,669.99 on 1 October 2026) covers the 7B and a tight 27B. I would not buy a 128 GB box to host slash-commands. Buy memory when the reference file or the model size demands it, which this use rarely does past 24 GB.
Mac mini M5 Pro 24 GB on Amazon
ASIN B0HGGHNQY6. Amazon Associates link. The live price is on that page, not locked in here.
A correction or a hardware question goes to the contact page.