Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause	Fix
A player's tag disappears when they relog	That tag is missing from tags.yml on some backend. On join, a backend clears an active tag it does not know, in the shared row	Make every backend's tags.yml identical, then reload
Plugin fails to start after a reboot, but reload had worked	A strict MiniMessage error in tags.yml	Fix the bad string. Check edits before a reboot
Tags show on main but not when chatting from another server	Plugin or chat format missing on that backend	Install it everywhere with the same database
Hover card is empty, or shows on main only	The card is built on the sender's backend; the hover numbers come from main	Make sure each backend has the jar and the ChatControl format
Hover numbers are wrong or zero	hover.server-name set on a second backend, overwriting main's row	Leave hover.server-name blank except on main
Boot says Hover card: 0 line(s)	Old config with an empty hover: section	Delete the empty section or write hover.lines fully
/custommessage says no permission	Node not granted	Grant snowbirdtags.custommessages.use in LuckPerms
A "warn only" ChatControl rule lets a message through	That rule gives no deny and no points, so nothing signals a block	Add then points to that rule group in ChatControl
unknown-player on grant	Player has never joined with the plugin loaded	Use their UUID

Boot log lines that mean it loaded:

[SnowbirdTags] Loaded 12 tags. Placeholder: %snowbirdtags_active%
[SnowbirdTags] Rank tags: 24 permission-gated badge(s). Placeholder: %snowbirdtags_rank_prefix%.
[SnowbirdTags] Hover card: 2 line(s), up to 3 per player. Placeholder: %snowbirdtags_hover%. Publishing as: 'main' ...
[SnowbirdTags] Custom message subsystem initialized: ...

The counts depend on each backend's catalog. Only main should say Publishing as: 'main'.