Skills ain't skills

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 14:58:53 +1000

Google announced Skills for Gemini yesterday. Same word as the Skills in Claude, ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Cowork. Different thing.

In a post on Google’s blog, Gemini product manager Deven Tokuno describes Skills as reusable custom instructions. You save them once and call them by typing a forward slash and the skill’s name. You can build one from an existing chat, stack several together and attach reference files such as PDFs and images. Sharing is promised, with details to come.

It is a tidy feature. It is also a Gem with a new name. Google says Skills replace Gems, with personal Gems sunsetting in November 2026 and existing ones converted automatically.

What the open format actually is

The Skills most of us already use are something else. Agent Skills is an open format: a folder with a SKILL.md file inside, holding a name, a description and instructions, plus optional scripts, reference material and templates. An agent reads only the name and description at startup and loads the full instructions when a task calls for them. Anthropic developed it and released it as an open standard.

Here is the part that matters. A skill you write once runs somewhere else. OpenAI’s documentation says Codex skills build on the open agent skills standard, and the agentskills.io showcase lists ChatGPT and Codex alongside Claude, GitHub Copilot, VS Code and Cursor. Microsoft’s Copilot Cowork documentation says its skills use the same standard, and its toolkit will import a Claude Code plugin with the SKILL.md files carried across as they are.

Three rival vendors. One folder format. That is rare in this industry.

Portable does not mean identical, to be fair. Each host decides which tools, permissions and script runtimes a skill can reach. But the same package has a head start everywhere it lands, and that head start is the whole point.

Google already knows the standard exists

This is the bit that stings. Google already supports the open format. The Gemini CLI documentation describes Agent Skills built on the open standard, discovered from a skills folder in your home directory or your workspace. Gemini CLI is on the agentskills.io list too.

So Google now has two things called skills. One is open and portable. The other is a slash command inside the Gemini app. I can find no mention of SKILL.md or the open standard anywhere in the announcement, and nothing that says you can bring a skills folder across.

My speculation, flagged as such: Google adds SKILL.md import to the app within a year, because the pressure from developers and enterprise customers will be hard to ignore. But that is a prediction, not an announcement.

Why a name matters

Words are interfaces. Until yesterday, “I built a skill” meant one thing. Now it needs a follow-up question: which kind? Tutorials, marketplaces and workmates' advice will collide, and the person who loses is the newcomer who builds something useful in the wrong one.

The stakes are bigger than confusion. A skill is where your know-how ends up: how you review a contract, format a report, write to a client. If that lives in an open folder, you can move between OpenAI, Anthropic and Microsoft on merit and take your work with you. If it lives behind a slash command in one app, you rent it.

Same word, opposite portability. That is lock-in wearing open-source vocabulary.

If you are building skills now, build them as SKILL.md folders and keep them somewhere you own. If you are building in Gemini, treat a Skill as a saved prompt that lives in Google’s house until Google says otherwise. And if anyone at Google is reading: either call it something else or teach it to read SKILL.md. We all win from open standards.

Sources:

Let skills in Gemini tackle your most repetitive tasks - Deven Tokuno, Google
Agent Skills overview - agentskills.io
Agent Skills in Codex - OpenAI
Cowork plugin development - Microsoft Learn
Agent Skills in Gemini CLI - Google Gemini CLI
Microsoft 365 Copilot Skills, Explained - A Guide to Cloud

Rambling Rows

Skills ain't skills

What the open format actually is

Google already knows the standard exists

Why a name matters