Transcription
Do you ever find yourself giving Gemini the same instructions over and over? Your preferences, your style, your rules, every single time? Let me show you a way to stop doing that forever.
Today, I'm going to show you what a gem is, how to create one under 60 seconds, and two real examples that will completely change the way you use AI. My name is Carlos, and I help small businesses around the world with their Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace subscription. For more information, visit itwithcardlos.com.
So, what exactly is a gem? Think of a standard Gemini as a general-purpose assistant. It can be a little bit of everything, but a gem, a gem is a specialist you create. It is your own custom version of Gemini with a name, a job, a set of instructions that it always follows. You can build a gem that's just your personal chef or your coding partner or just your social media manager. The best part, you only explain your rules once and the gem remembers them forever. And creating one is actually super simple. Let me show you.
From the Gemini home screen, click on "Gems" in the sidebar. Here you will see any gems you already have created. Let's go ahead and click on "Create a new gem." This page has three simple parts. First, the name. Let's call this one "My Test Gem." Second, a description. Here, explain what it does. And then the instructions. This is the brain of your gem. This is where you tell it who it is, what it does, and the rules it should follow. So, for example, I could type: "You are a master gardener. Only give me advice on zone 5b. Always be encouraging." Then you can add a kind of knowledge base files that can be used as a reference to do the work. This is optional. And finally, save it. That's it. Your new gem shows up in the sidebar, ready to use.
But the real magic comes from the instructions you put in. Let me show you two examples that I think you're going to like.
Here's my first example. It is something that I use in my personal life. I'm busy, and I'm trying to stick to a budget, and I have specific dietary rules, and honestly, I got tired reminding Gemini every single time. So I created a gem called "The 30 Minutes Chef." Let me create it from the beginning.
On the left, I click on "Gems," and then I click on "New Gem." The name is going to be "The 30 Minutes Chef." For the description, I'm going to use "Just my personal chef." And here I have the instructions: "You are my personal chef. Your rules are 100% gluten-free, 30 minutes max, and budget-conscious." I will scroll down and I will add some knowledge base. I'm going to add three books that I have. I click on the plus sign, and I have those PDF books in my drive. So I click on "Add from Drive," and here I have them. I will select the three of them and I click on "Insert." The three books have been uploaded. Now I will click on "Save."
My new gem has been created, and I have it here on the left. I click on it and I can start using it. Now watch how easy this is. Without repeating any of those rules, I can just type: "I have chicken breast, broccoli, eggs, and hot sauce. What's for dinner?" Then I click on "Submit." And instantly, I got the recipe: "The Hot and Spicy Chicken and Broccoli Scramble." It will take me like 15 to 20 minutes to prepare. It is gluten-free and it is on budget. Here I have the ingredients, then the instructions, and some additional notes or recommendations. So no reminders, no extra steps, just useful results every time. This has completely changed the way how I plan my weeknight meals.
Let me now show you a different example. This one is the "Email Bounceback Analyzer." This is one that I use almost every single day for my daily work. I have clients telling me to analyze the email bouncebacks that they have received. So, gems are also incredibly useful for work. Here's a bounceback example. Let's see how this works.
I click on "New Gem." I'm going to call this one "Email Bounceback Analyzer." As a description, I'm just going to add "Analyze any emails bounceback." And the instructions, which is the most important part. I enter: "Act as an email deliverability expert and analyze any text that I pasted to it. Give me a clean, simple report with four parts: a summary, a bounce type, a likely cost, and a recommendation action." In this case, I'm not going to provide any knowledge base. So, I click on "Save."
My new gem is ready to work. I click on it on the left. As a prompt, I'm just going to enter a bounceback that I want to analyze. And you probably have seen something like this before. It's a kind of giant block of text from MailerDaemon with probably an error message with a lot of text that most of the times are not very clear. So I just click on "Submit."
In a couple of seconds, I get my report, and I can read here: "The bounce report is a classic case. Here's the analysis. The email was permanently rejected by the recipient mail server. The specific error message indicates that the email address is not recognized or does not exist in the system." As part of the report, it is telling me it's a permanent failure. And here is the likely cost: an invalid or non-existing recipient. Then my report provides recommended actions. So I can immediately do this.
So that's what gems are. They are not just chats. They are custom tools, personal assistants, an expert partner you design yourself. You can build a fitness coach, a sarcastic movie critic, a budget assistant, or even a coding partner that only uses the libraries you prefer.
Now, I want to hear from you. What's the first gem you are going to build? Drop your ideas in the comments. I would love to check them out. Thanks for watching, and I hope to see you next time. Remember, stay secure in the cloud, keep tech-savvy, and ahead with AI.