The Claude equivalent of a Gemini Gem is a Claude Skill. Until now, most comparisons paired Gems with Claude Projects, and that made sense: both are a place you open, with fixed instructions and uploaded files. But Google is turning every Gem into a Gemini Skill, starting November 17, 2026 for personal accounts. A Gemini Skill and a Claude Skill are built the same way, as a SKILL.md file plus reference files, and you can download one and upload it to the other.
A Claude Project is still the better fit if what you valued in your Gem was a single place that holds all the chats for one piece of work, such as one book or one client. Gemini Skills drop that page, and Projects keep it.
What happens to Gems on November 17?
Your Gems turn into Gemini Skills automatically. You don’t need to do anything, and you can keep using a Gem until it moves. Google’s transition page gives the schedule: personal Google accounts in November 2026, Workspace business, enterprise and non-profit accounts in March 2027, and education accounts in June 2027. TechCrunch reported the start date of November 17.
What carries over:
- The Gem’s name, description and instructions.
- Knowledge files in supported formats. You can also download each file yourself and upload it to the skill.
What doesn’t, at least for now:
- The default Gem tools: Create video, Create music, Canvas, Deep Research and Guided learning.
- Files from GitHub.
- Drive files, Gemini Notebooks and sharing. Google says these are coming to skills later.
How you use it changes too. You no longer open a Gem and chat inside it. You type / in any chat to pick a skill, or Gemini applies one on its own when it decides the skill fits your prompt. You can use several skills in one chat. Skills don’t have a page that lists your past chats with them, and you can have up to 100 active skills.
Skills work without a Google AI subscription, but for now only on personal Google accounts and only for users 18 or older (Google).
Why is a Claude Skill the closer match now?
Because the three things that made a Gem feel like a Project are the three things Google removed. Here is how they line up:
| Gem (before) | Gemini Skill (after) | Claude Project | Claude Skill | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| How you use it | Open it and chat inside | / in any chat, or applied automatically | Open it and chat inside | Applied when your request matches it |
| Own list of past chats | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Several at once | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Instructions and files | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Download as a file | No | Yes, a .zip | No | It is a folder you upload as a .zip |
A Claude Skill is a folder with a SKILL.md file and any reference files, uploaded as a ZIP. Claude loads it when your request matches its description. Skills are available on Free, Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise plans, and a skill you turn on in Claude also loads in Claude Code when you sign in with the same account (Claude).
Gemini Skills use the same open format. You can upload a SKILL.md file, a folder or a ZIP with a SKILL.md inside, up to 100 MB, and download any skill as a .zip (Google). This is the part that’s new. Before, a Gem you spent an hour on only existed inside Gemini. Now it can leave as a file.
When is a Claude Project the better choice?
Pick a Project when the work is one ongoing thing and you want its history in one place. A Project keeps its own chats, instructions and files, and each Project has its own memory and summary, separate from your other chats (Claude). CNET’s comparison found this in practice: a Project remembered things said in earlier chats inside it, and a Gem only remembered its instructions.
Free Claude accounts can create up to five Projects (Claude).
A simple way to decide:
- The Gem is a way of working, such as your writing style, an editing checklist or a report format. Make it a Claude Skill, so it works in any chat.
- The Gem is a body of work, such as one novel, one course or one client, with files you keep adding to. Make it a Claude Project.
The two also combine. A writing-style skill can sit in your Claude settings and work inside every Project.
How do you move a Gem to Claude?
These steps come from Google’s and Anthropic’s help pages. We haven’t run a Gemini export through Claude’s upload ourselves, so check the file before you upload it.
As a Claude Skill
- After your Gem has become a skill, open Skills in Gemini’s settings, hover over the skill, click More, then Download. You get a
.zip. - Unzip it and open
SKILL.md. Check that it starts with anameand adescription. Claude uses the description to decide when to load the skill, so make it say clearly what the skill is for. - In Claude, go to Customize → Skills, click +, then Create skill → Upload a skill, and upload the ZIP.
If you don’t want to wait for November 17, copy the Gem’s instructions into a new SKILL.md yourself and put the knowledge files in the same folder.
As a Claude Project
- Create a Project named after the Gem.
- Paste the Gem’s instructions into the Project instructions.
- Download the Gem’s knowledge files and upload them to the Project.
Your past chats with the Gem don’t come with you either way.
What about Claude Code and Codex?
The same skill folder works in coding agents, because they read the same format:
- Claude Code loads skills you turned on in Claude when you sign in with the same account. You can also put the folder in
~/.claude/skills/on your computer. - Codex looks for skills in
~/.agents/skills/for all your work, or.agents/skills/inside a project (OpenAI).
So once your Gem is a file, you can keep one copy and use it in Gemini, Claude, Claude Code and Codex.
Where should the files live?
If your Gem was a writing helper, the skill is only half of it. The other half is the material it works from: past articles, notes, sources. In Gemini and in a Claude Project, that material is uploaded into one app at a time, and moving apps means uploading again.
If you write with Claude Code, Codex or Antigravity, you can try our app, StashBase. It keeps that material as ordinary files in a folder on your computer:
- Open the folder and chat with Claude Code, Codex or Antigravity beside your documents. You can switch agents between conversations in the same project.
- PDFs, Word files and images become searchable text, so the agent can find the passage it needs instead of you uploading files again.
- The agent’s edits show up in the document as suggested changes you accept or reject.
You use your existing Claude or ChatGPT subscription. StashBase doesn’t sync to Google Drive, so if your Gem lived on Drive files that change every day, staying in Gemini is simpler.
For skills that help with writing, see Humanizer and Similar Claude Skills and How to Use the Humanizer Claude Skill. For building a skill from your own writing, see How to Write with AI Without Losing Your Voice.