Why chapters fail silently
YouTube chapters have three requirements and no error message. The first timestamp must be exactly 00:00, there must be at least three timestamps in total, and they must run in ascending order. Break any one and chapters simply do not appear — no warning in Studio, no note on the video, nothing to tell you why.
This is why so many creators conclude the feature is unreliable. It is not unreliable; it is strict and quiet. The most common failure by far is starting at 00:15 or 01:00 because the intro runs first, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do and disables the whole list.
The tool checks all three rules against the description it produced and reports each one separately, so you find out here rather than by refreshing the watch page and wondering.