To be clear:
We're trying to populate clients with new messages AND avoid flooding the client with hundreds of posts from a very active channel.
"Send me all posts since <latest message on client> for all the channels I follow, but not more than 10 posts per channel that I follow."
The aim being that a device would have a rough idea of how many posts it needs to draw a screen, and subsequent posts for that channel can then be pulled in.
Secondarily, we need to query for unread counters per channel.
S.