also, "would prefer it was in the protocol" is requiring the protocol to not just be a relay protocol but also a consensus

no

just had this conversation with regard to semisol's idea about cursors being jammed into REQ/EOSE envelopes

no, this is a separate protocol, like i said to nostr:npub12262qa4uhw7u8gdwlgmntqtv7aye8vdcmvszkqwgs0zchel6mz7s6cgrkj  - make a new query type that only returns event IDs, problem solved, no state to save, far less data cost, and the client is free to paginate it as they wish