The first thing (and easiest) is to check whether the variable change was deployed to the running container. That trips me up too.

Railway variables are available to the running service deployment, but the docs also say that adding, updating, or removing variables creates staged changes that must be reviewed and deployed before they apply. So the dashboard can show the value while the currently running deployment is still using an older snapshot.

I would check this in order:

1. Open the `godly-match` service.

2. Go to the service's `Variables` tab and confirm `FIREBASE_ENABLED` is defined on that service, not only on another service or environment.

3. Check whether Railway shows staged changes. If it does, deploy/apply them.

4. Trigger a fresh redeploy of `godly-match`.

5. In the new deploy logs, print only presence/value for this non-secret test variable:

log.Printf("FIREBASE_ENABLED present=%t value=%q", os.Getenv("FIREBASE_ENABLED") != "", os.Getenv("FIREBASE_ENABLED"))

6. Make sure you are checking the same Railway environment where the variable was set, for example production vs preview.

If `enabled_test_12345` is defined on the correct service/environment, the staged changes are deployed, and a fresh deployment still receives an empty string, this likely needs Railway staff to inspect the deployment snapshot for `godly-match`.

Docs:

- https://docs.railway.com/variables

- https://docs.railway.com/variables/reference

i had to

// change this:

enabled = os.Getenv("FIREBASE_ENABLED") == "true"

// to this temporarily:

enabled = true