Embodiments are disclosed for a machine learning (ML) gesture recognition with a framework for adding user-customized gestures. In an embodiment, a method comprises: receiving sensor data indicative of a gesture made by a user, the sensor data obtained from at least one sensor of a wearable device worn on a limb of the user; generating a current encoding of features extracted from the sensor data using a machine learning model with the features as input; generating similarity metrics between the current encoding and each encoding in a set of previously generated encodings for gestures; generating similarity scores based on the similarity metrics; predicting the gesture made by the user based on the similarity scores; and performing an action on the wearable device or other device based on the predicted gesture.