MQTT in OH3.2 cannot get it running

I configuration manually so have never used auto discovery, but make sure you have the correct transformations installed in openHAB. From the documentation:

The HomeAssistant MQTT requires two transformations to be installed:

JINJA-Transformations
JSONPath-Transformations
These can be installed under Settings->Addons->Transformations

Here’s a post you may have come across when searching the forum: