Just made the realization that I'm probably thinking about the tags and categories thing too hard. I can just treat the tags like I would've on cohost.
Searching the tags page with Ctrl+F works great as a search function for the tags without the need to do any scripting stuff for a search function on the site. I'm not super keen on learning all that stuff because it seems kinda scary.
Categories are for broad topics that people can subscribe to (like this new "fluff" category for rambling mostly unorganized word posts), and tags are for more specific things that people can click on to find similar media on the site.
Additionally, this is my site. It doesn't need to make perfect sense to everyone. As long as it works. The site will become more populated with tags as I use it, so it'll never be perfect, and that's alright.
Also happy spooky month, and rest well Cohost.