Google turns off Opal on 17 November and its workflows will not move

Google turns off Opal on 17 November and its workflows will not move

9 November 2026: Google will switch off Opal, its experimental builder for AI mini-apps, on 17 November 2026, and "Gems made by Labs" in Gemini goes with it. Google describes this as a graduation into its main products, but the practical point for anyone who built on Opal is in one line of its FAQ: existing workflows will not migrate automatically, so each one has to be set up again by hand.

Not yet independently verified. This rests on Google's own frequently asked questions page for Opal, read on 9 November 2026, which carries no announcement date. We have not seen a separate Google announcement or an independent report. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

Two places to rebuild, neither of them automatic

Google says Opal and Gems made by Labs began as an experiment in how people build custom AI workflows, and that the lessons shaped skills in Gemini, which it calls its newest core feature for saving and reusing custom instructions in chat. It points everyday users at skills in Gemini, and deeper prototyping and prompt experiments at Google AI Studio.

Those are different kinds of product, so the choice depends on what a workflow does. A saved prompt that a team reuses in chat is the simple case. A chained mini-app with several steps is a rebuild, and the FAQ offers no conversion tool for it.

What survives in Drive, and what stops

Files are safe. Saved workflow files sit in the owner's Google Drive, under My Drive in a folder called Opal, and Google says it will not delete or touch them when the service ends. Prompt text can be recovered at any time by downloading those files and opening them in a plain text editor.

Running them is another matter. Google says workflows will no longer run interactively after 17 November, and hosted web endpoints such as breadboard-ai.web.app turn off alongside opal.google.com. Google recommends opening each workflow before the date and copying out the prompts and custom instructions worth keeping, which is easier than picking them out of raw files later.

Any business that has handed a mini-app to staff or customers should plan for that link to stop being useful, and tell the people who rely on it before the date does.

The open source code stays up but stops moving

Two public repositories are affected: Breadboard and the Opal ADK, both under the breadboard-ai organisation on GitHub. After 17 November they will be placed in read-only, archived mode. They remain publicly accessible under their open source licences, so developers can still view, clone or fork the code. Anyone who depends on them takes on the maintenance from then on, because the FAQ describes no further development there.

Data, and what to do this week

On data, the FAQ says content from Opal is not used to train Google's generative models, while humans may review a small subset of prompts to troubleshoot or to understand use cases. It does not set out a separate deletion date for that data.

A sensible order is to list every Opal workflow in use, copy out the prompts, decide which belong in Gemini and which in AI Studio, and warn users of any shared mini-app.

In our catalogue

Opal and Google AI Studio do not have listings with us. Our catalogue tracks 151 AI models, including Google's Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash.

Sources

• Google for Developers: Opal frequently asked questions and best practices, 9 November 2026
• Shutdown Watch: list of upcoming software closures, 9 November 2026