i'm going to fix this without the cooperation of rockstar client devs by creating an extended "privileged event" processing scheme where the relay will recognise a tag on events to mean that only the author and tagged npubs can fetch the event.
with that, i will be able to make "only visible to you" messages that put the communication from the relay (or anyone) right in your kind 1 feed. the limitation will be of course that the relay has to support this kind and respect the privilege but it works around the customer communication problem.
i'll be implementing it as part of a system to automate relay subscription such that the user just zaps the relay npub and it then publishes a message internally that your kind 1 client will fetch (so, you have to follow, and then zap the relay) and voila. customer comms problem solved.
since i started working with you, i swore that i would build a relay that would be so compelling that you would adopt it for your infrastructure. it won't be much longer now.
i'll also be learning front end dev in the coming weeks as i'm going to get paid to do it for a while. so probably i will add a full UI that is returned when you request to the / with a normal browser request (and thus also visible in nostrudel's relay UI tab).