Create and manage skills

Skills are reusable custom instructions that help the Gemini Enterprise assistant perform specific tasks, such as reviewing legal contracts or writing in your brand voice.

Each skill is a package containing a skill.md prompt file. A skill package can also include scripts, files, or background context that the assistant uses to complete a task.

Overview

Key aspects of skills include:

  • Open standard: Skills follow an open standard which is managed by agentskills.io.
  • Modular extension: Skills let you teach an agent domain-specific tasks without resorting to a bloated system prompt or resource-intensive fine-tuning.
  • Dynamic access: Gemini Enterprise can access these specialized instructions automatically when they are relevant to your specific question or task.

What is a skill versus an agent workflow

Understanding when to build a skill versus a complex agent workflow is critical for maintaining an efficient workspace:

Feature type Best use case Examples
Skills Repetitive, domain-specific tasks that act as reusable building blocks for the assistant, or tasks that you want to reuse across agents. Pulling the latest metrics, updating documents for brand guidelines, or creating a customer pitch deck.
Agent workflows Complex, auditable, multistep processes that often require long asynchronous tasks. Deal review workflows with approvals or comprehensive employee onboarding agents.

Default skills available by Google

Gemini Enterprise provides the following Google-managed skills:

Skill Description
Brand Voice Ensures content aligns with your company's specific tone, style, and brand guidelines.
Contract Creation Generates initial drafts of legal agreements based on provided terms and conditions.
Contract Review Analyzes legal documents to identify key clauses, potential risks, or deviations from standard templates.
Customer Briefing Summarizes customer information, recent interactions, and key objectives to prepare for meetings.
Project Updates Consolidates project data and status reports into concise updates for stakeholders.

Create new skills

To create a new skill in the Gemini Enterprise web app, follow these steps:

  1. Sign in to the Gemini Enterprise web app.
  2. In the navigation menu, click Skills.
  3. Click + New skill.
  4. Enter a unique name for your skill. The skill name must be unique within your organization.
  5. Enter a description. The description is important because Gemini Enterprise uses it to determine if a skill can be used to help with a user's prompt or task. You can also add trigger instructions to the skill description to help guide Gemini Enterprise.
  6. Provide the skill instructions using natural language in the chat box or by manually editing the Markdown details.
  7. Click Create. The new skill you create is turned on by default.

Import skills

You can import existing skills as Markdown or ZIP files. For a successful upload, a skill.md file must be located in the root directory of the uploaded file or package.

To import a skill, follow these steps:

  1. Sign in to the Gemini Enterprise web app.
  2. In the navigation menu, click Skills.
  3. Click Import.
  4. Drag or browse for the Markdown or ZIP file, and click Import. The imported skill is turned on by default.

The data to create the skill, such as the name, description, and instructions, are automatically extracted from the uploaded Markdown or ZIP file. If you upload a ZIP file, it can include the skill.md file along with a scripts/ directory containing Python or Bash code.

Update a skill

To update an existing skill, follow these steps:

  1. Sign in to the Gemini Enterprise web app.
  2. In the navigation menu, click Skills.
  3. Click the skill that you want to update.
  4. Depending on who created the skill, do one of the following:
    • Skills created by you: Click Edit skill.
    • Skills provided by Google: You cannot directly edit Google-managed skills. Click Duplicate to edit to create a duplicate copy of the skill that you can modify.
  5. Make the necessary updates to the instructions, name, or description.
  6. Click Update.

Use a skill

You can use skills directly within your chat conversations in the Gemini Enterprise web app.

  1. In the navigation menu, click Skills.
  2. Click a skill from the gallery and click Try it.
  3. You are taken to a new chat with the selected skill referenced.

In-conversation usage

When chatting with the Gemini Enterprise assistant, you can use skills in the following ways:

  • Manual mentions: You can explicitly invoke a skill by using the @ mention feature in the chat bar (for example, @Brand Voice).

  • Direct requests: If you need Gemini Enterprise to use a specific skill, you can ask it directly in your prompt. For example, Use the brand voice skill to review this.

  • Automatic selection: Gemini Enterprise automatically uses a skill when it is relevant to your task based on the skill's description and trigger instructions.

Turn off a skill

If you want to prevent Gemini Enterprise from using a specific skill, you can turn it off:

  1. In the navigation menu, click Skills.
  2. In the skills gallery, find the skill that you want to turn off.
  3. Click the toggle next to the skill to the Off position.

When a skill is toggled off, the Gemini Enterprise assistant won't invoke or use that skill in conversations.

Known issues and limitations

This section lists the known issues and limitations for skills in Gemini Enterprise.

Known issues

  • Automatic selection might not trigger when expected.
  • If a skill contains multiple files (such as an imported ZIP package), only the skill.md file is visible in the UI, although other files in the package are available internally for execution.

Limitations

  • Skills are not available for use with agents.
  • Organizational sharing of skills is not supported.
  • Skills support Python and Bash execution only.
  • While a skill might be referenced in the model's reasoning, the UI does not explicitly mention which skills were used in the final response.
  • The web app editor lets you manually or naturally create skills that use a single skill.md file. More complex skills that require additional scripts or files must be imported as a ZIP file.
  • Skills don't work with custom Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers that have been integrated into Gemini Enterprise.
  • Natural language skill creation does not use your conversation context or connectors as inputs to create a skill.