These are both pretty straightforward.
The <$levelN_title> tag is only returning the title of the current document during compile. If you need more detail you can find it here: https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/lh4352-use-of-placeholder-leveln-title-tags/50243/1
(I’m mentioning it in this post because I didn’t put “Bug” in the topic title of that one.)
The second problem is that with the most recent update scrivener will only open one project from the windows taskbar. After that, it no longer opens a second one from there–it shows them but doesn’t respond when I click one. So I have to use the file>open approach if I want a second project open at the same time.