Not recognizing my custom templates in hierarchy

If you register a taxonomy named projects, and create taxonomy-projects.php, the URL mysite.com/projects will not exist. There is no such page in WordPress.

If you create a term inside inside that taxonomy, “My Project”, that term will be accessible at mysite.com/projects/my-project and that URL will use taxonomy-projects.php to list all posts that belong to that project. mysite.com/projects on its own does not exist.