Tags seem sometimes to collect their counterparts from other instances but most often they don't. (Which has the unintended benefit that they can be used as bookmarks.)
Repeats are never federated, neither from other gnusocial instances nor from mastodon-, pleroma-, friendica- or otherwise run instances.
I don't know. @administrator didn't cut back on functionality for that reason, as far as I know. My guess is that it's a glitch in the software, perhaps the upcoming v3 of gnusocial brings some improvements.
@administrator@simsa04 do you have a recommendation on the best way to folllow gnusocial v3 development? trying to follow the links from gnu.org seems to result in a web of blackholes.
I'm not sure I understand the problem you are facing. Although I'm happy to help out any time, but in case you have technical problems with gnuscoail.net, I recommend you ask @administrator as well.