Google Is Shutting Down Opal on November 17: What to Save and How to Move to Gemini Skills

Google is turning off Opal on November 17, and the same announcement quietly sets a date for Gems too. If you built anything in either one, you have a short window to save your prompts, and skills in Gemini are where most of that work will end up.

Google announced skills in Gemini on September 30. You save a set of instructions once, then call it up in any chat by typing a forward slash and the skill name. It is rolling out in Gemini chat globally, with Workspace business, enterprise, nonprofit and education accounts to follow in the coming weeks.

Here is what is changing, what you need to save, and how to build your first skill in about five minutes.

The Dates That Matter

Google staggers the shutdown by account type. Find yours in this table and put it in your calendar.

When	What happens
September 30, 2026	Skills roll out in Gemini chat
November 16, 2026	Treat this as your last safe day to open Opal and copy your prompts
November 17, 2026	Opal and Gems made by Labs turn off
November 2026	Gems go away for personal accounts and convert to skills automatically
March 2027	Gems go away for Workspace business, enterprise and nonprofit accounts
June 2027	Gems go away for Workspace education accounts

Source for all of these: Google’s own Opal FAQ and the Gems to skills help page.

Here is the part people will miss. Your regular Gems migrate on their own. Opal workflows and Gems made by Labs do not. Google says you will need to set up new skills or prompts manually.

Gems, Opal and Skills: What Actually Changes

Skills are not a one-to-one swap for Opal. Let’s break it down.

	Gems	Opal	Skills
What it is	A custom chatbot with saved instructions	A visual builder for AI mini-apps	Reusable instructions you call in any chat
How you use it	Open it from the Gems manager	Run it on opal.google.com	Type / and the skill name in your chat
Automatic migration	Yes	No	Not applicable
Status	Ends from November 2026 for personal accounts	Ends November 17, 2026	Live now, rolling out

Two things stand out to me. First, Gemini can apply a skill on its own when your prompt matches it, so you do not always have to type the slash. Second, you can stack skills in one chat. Google’s example is pairing a writing style skill with a brand guidelines skill to get on-brand drafts in your voice.

What you lose is the visual runner. If your Opal was a chain of steps with its own interface, a skill will not reproduce that. It will hold the instructions. For deeper builds, Google points developers to Google AI Studio.

Step by Step: Save Your Opal Work Before It Disappears

Your files are safe. Google saves every workflow to your Drive, and it says it will not delete or touch them during shutdown. What stops working is running them interactively. So the job is simple: get the prompt text out.

Go to opal.google.com and sign in.
Open your first workflow.
Copy the prompt from every step into a Google Doc or a plain text file. Name the file after the workflow.
Repeat for each workflow you want to keep. Do the ones you actually use first and skip the experiments.
Open Google Drive and go to My Drive, then the folder named Opal. Confirm your workflow files are there.
Optional: download that folder as a backup. After the shutdown you can still read the prompt text by opening the downloaded files in any plain text editor, such as Notepad or TextEdit.

Do this today, not on November 16. Ten minutes now beats a scramble later.

Step by Step: Build Your First Skill

You need to be 18 or over, signed in with a personal Google Account, and have Keep Activity turned on. Skills are available in the Gemini mobile app, the Gemini app on Mac, and at gemini.google.com. Rollout is gradual, so it may not show up for you yet. Details are on Google’s skills help page.

The Fast Way: Ask Gemini to Build It

Go to gemini.google.com.
In the chat box, type: Create a skill based on these instructions: and paste your instructions after it.
Submit. Gemini saves the skill to your Skills page.
To tweak it, describe the change in the same chat.
Test it in a new chat by typing / and picking your skill.

The Manual Way: Full Control

On the sidebar, click Settings, then Skills.
Click Create manually.
Enter a name (lowercase, words separated by hyphens), a description, and your instructions.
Click Create.

Google’s three tips for writing a good one are worth following. Say when the skill should be used. Keep the instructions short and focused on what is unique to the task. Add an example of the output you expect.

Copy This: A Skill You Can Make in Two Minutes

Paste this after Create a skill based on these instructions: and adjust it to your job.

Name: weekly-update
Use when I ask for a weekly update, status report, or Friday recap.
Write in a direct, plain voice with no filler. Use three sections: Wins (three at most), Blockers, and Next Week (three priorities). Keep it under 200 words. If I have not given you a number or a date, ask me for it instead of guessing.

Now use it. Type /weekly-update, paste your rough notes, and you get a clean update. That is the whole idea.

Turn an Old Opal Prompt Into a Skill

Here is a shortcut for your rescued prompts. Paste this into Gemini:

Create a skill based on these instructions: [paste your Opal prompt text here]. Give it a lowercase, hyphenated name. Write a description that says when to use it. Keep the instructions short and add one example of good output.

Already Using Gems? Here Is Your Plan

You do not have to do anything. Google says it will automatically recreate your Gems as skills, along with supported files, when Gems go away. If you want to switch early, it takes a few minutes per Gem:

Open the Gem’s edit screen and download any files listed under Knowledge.
Go to Settings, then Skills, then Create manually.
Copy the name, description and instructions from your Gem into the skill.
Click Create.
If the Gem had files, download the skill, add the files to its folder, and use Replace skill to upload the whole folder.

Google’s help page has the full walkthrough with the folder naming rules. One more detail: you can import skills from other platforms by uploading a SKILL.md file.

Honest Limitations

Opal does not migrate. Every workflow needs manual rebuilding, and a multi-step visual flow will not translate neatly into a skill.
Some Gemini tools do not work with skills yet. Google lists Canvas, Deep Research, video creation, music creation and guided learning as unsupported for now.
Gems features are still catching up. Sharing, adding files from Google Drive and Gemini Notebook notebooks are promised in the coming weeks, not live today.
Work and school accounts wait. Skills currently need a personal Google Account.
The trigger is changing. Google says the slash will soon become an at sign, so do not build muscle memory you cannot adjust.
There is a cap. You can create as many skills as you like, but only 100 can be active at once.
Google AI Pro and Ultra open more doors. Skills also power Gemini Spark tasks and schedules, which need a paid plan. Chat skills do not, according to Google’s help page.

Your Five Minute Checklist

Open opal.google.com and copy the prompts from every workflow you care about.
Confirm your files sit in My Drive, then Opal.
Build one skill from your most used prompt.
Test it in a fresh chat with the slash command.
Tell a colleague who uses Opal. They will not see this coming.

Most people will find out about this when something stops working. You just got a head start.

Know someone who built mini-apps in Opal or relies on Gems? Send them this post before November 17. It might save them an afternoon of rebuilding.

Sources

More on this topic: browse the Gemini and Google archives.