Application-specific relay vs open relay

I ran a small relay on my homelab while I played around vibe-coding a nostr client... then forgot about it.

Anymore I have my agents remote into my box to review and do maintenance. After months of forgetting about my relay I check it and apparently it was full of notes, spam and DMs from random npubs... so I deleted everything and now it's stricktly npub whitelisted.

I started again building my client and I'm making wonderful progress... but I'm not 100% sure how to manage the spam.

My thought is that it will be an application specific relay.. which means it's really just meant to support my client. Perhaps I'll get it to only accept kinds/events from my client? It's not meant for a primal user to connect to an use like a shitty-twitter like what most of nostr seems to be atm.