Yes, that "bridge kind:1" note was a bad idea I had in confusion, you should have spoken up! But that is removed now.

NIP-23 doesn't need any new relay features, just that relays have NIP-33 implemented.

There are two very early client prototypes at https://postr2.netlify.app and https://nostrium2.netlify.app -- although they don't implement the link parsing part yet.