Absolutely yes to all of it. You've been added to the relay. I'm still learning how all of those concepts can come together, but I believe this is the foundation that Nostr is currently missing.
Discussion
Okay insane question: what's the best way to interact with your private relay?
wss://logstr.mycelium.social
Just add it on Amethyst? Is there a chat or something?
Actually the most important question one could ask!
The best way I have been able to manage isolated or topical relays, is by adding them to "general relays" in Amethyst. I also disable them for dm's and global.
I made a feature request for Amethyst recently to expand upon "local relays" in order to facilitate the growing list of relays we might interact with. It is a recent open issue if you'd like to check that out.
I'm starting with a desktop Nostr client, which will be similar to "old reddit" with relays representing each "community" or subreddit. I am more of a designer than a coder, so mostly I am being humbled at every turn.
We need client evolution.
Oh hell yea. I'm very optimistic about relay-centric design like that.
Is the "old reddit" relay-based client open sourced somewhere / can people contribute?,
Sadly I've only just begun development. My architecture is simple- using bun.sh or Buntralino to build out a Nostr client with Rust-Nostr. My only current priorities are to establish a feed of notes, gift-wrapped dm's, and essentially copying the NoteDeck UI for what it is now. The idea is that once a "not-purely Rust version of NoteDeck" exists, it will be easy for anyone to fork and develop on, using whatever frameworks they want. I am still using Bootstrap and figuring out how to construct a UI. Have worked with Rust-Nostr a bit but I have a lot to learn in the process.
I think narrowing NoteDeck explicitly to Rust developers is a bottleneck for Nostr clients right now. So, I hope to open up the ecosystem in a new way by addressing the most crucial aspect: relay management.
It's easy to imagine a Reddit client- simply look at oddBean. OddBean is cool but is built into strfry, and C++ is not the most relevant language among Nostr I assume. I've never touched it but my experience doesn't mean much here.
What we're lacking is a kind-1 explorer that treats relays like subreddits. I'm running relay.tools to facilitate the relay aspects. My VPS running RT can simply use API calls to map out the topology of my relays.
My client could also in theory ping any instance of relay.tools and fetch relays via NIP-66. There is so much that is possible, and I think it begins with a new client that leverages the best of everything- but primarily focuses on kind-1 events and secure direct messaging with outbox support.
Someone just pointed out to me that Jumble.social is doing the relay grouping. This is exactly what I'm referring to, but my client will be local in design. If this is FOSS it may be forked for the time being.