Intro to Gems (small AI helpers) in Gemini

A practical, honest guide to Gems: what they can do, when they're useful, and the limits worth knowing about.

A Gem is a customised version of Gemini set up for a specific kind of task.

Think of it as a simple AI assistant you've configured ahead of time. You give it a role, instructions, and optionally some knowledge (files) for it to draw on.

When does it make sense to create a Gem?

If you keep using Gemini for the same kind of task, with roughly the same instructions, that's a good sign you should make a Gem.

The point? Instead of writing a long prompt and attaching context files every single time, you can build a Gem that already knows how you want it to handle that particular job.

A few practical examples of tasks that work well as Gems:

• An expert text critic that gives you honest feedback and suggestions for improvement

• An assistant that tidies up and summarises your notes in the same format and style every time

• A Gem that helps you write product descriptions based on a predefined template

• A Gem that always produces reports in the same format (describe the structure and format you want, and ideally upload a good example in the "knowledge" section.)

Worth knowing: 2 types of Gems.

It helps to distinguish between two types of Gems.

1. Pre-built Gems from Google. You'll find them under Gems in the "Made by Google" section. Many of these are more capable than the Gems you can build yourself. They're designed to work closely with Google's own services. The Productivity planner, for example, can feel more like a small semi-agent than a regular chatbot, because it can actually do things in your Google apps.

2. Gems you build yourself. These run on the instructions and knowledge you've defined, but they're quite limited when it comes to connecting to other tools and systems. Custom Gems give answers and outputs straight in the chat, and usually can't do anything outside the chat window.