Lint your {{n}} variables before Meta rejects the template

Meta's placeholder rules look arbitrary until you see what they exist to prevent. Sequential numbering from {{1}} is not pedantry — the numbers are array positions. When you submit a template, the example values ride along as an ordered array, and at send time your API call supplies real values the same way. A gap in the sequence would leave a sample with no placeholder to belong to, so the API refuses the payload outright, before a human reviewer ever sees it. The same logic explains why the body cannot start or end with a variable and why mostly-placeholder bodies get rejected as too dynamic: an approved template is a contract about what the message will say, and a body that is variables held together by punctuation makes that contract meaningless.

The most reliable fix is also the least technical: use fewer variables inside fuller sentences. “Hi {{1}}, your order {{2}} has shipped and should arrive by {{3}}.” gives a reviewer three clearly-purposed slots inside real prose. Six placeholders chained across fragments does the opposite — it reads like a form letter to the reviewer and, just as importantly, to the customer who eventually receives it. If two values always travel together (a date and a time, an amount and a currency), consider merging them into one variable and formatting the combined string in your own code before sending. Fewer moving parts means fewer ways for a send to fail later, too.

• Write example values as if a customer will read them. Reviewers see the filled-in message, not the raw body. “Priya” and “ORD-4821” read like a real notification; “test” and “123” invite closer scrutiny and slower review.
• Keep values consistent with the copy. If the body promises a delivery date, the sample should look like a date. A mismatch between what a sentence claims and what the sample shows is an easy reason to reject.
• Count distinct variables, not occurrences. Reusing {{1}} twice is allowed, but the example array still lists it once. Listing it twice shifts every later value out of position.

A clean variable report does not guarantee approval — content review still judges category fit and policy compliance. What it does guarantee is that a rejection, if it comes, is about something worth a conversation, not a stray brace or a missing {{2}} you could have caught in ten seconds.