Can I ask a follow-up? Man, I hate being so dumb.

Of course, don't be shy :)

Then how do I transfer the sats I've earned on SN to the new wallet? SN will send the sats over some set of channels; is the assumption that my node will have opened enough channels with enough capacity on various routes to receive that amount of sats?

Yes, to send sats on lightning you need enough balance on your side of your channels (outbound liquidity) and to receive sats, you need enough balance on the other side of your channels (inbound liquidity). If you need to manage channels and how depends heavily on what wallet you're using.

If you really want to run your own node, I'd recommend phoenixd which manages liquidity for you for fees.

If you also want to manage your own channels, I'd recommend setting up LND and open a private channel to SN (= channel that isn't announced to the network so it isn't used to route payments of others). You can then send some sats back to yourself onchain via a service like boltz.exchange so you have inbound liquidity on that channel. You will then enjoy zero fees for send+recv on lightning to SN.

To connect that LND node to SN for zapping, you can run nostr-wallet-connect-lnd (NWC) or LNbits on top of that LND node.

In other words, there's the basic connectivity of setting up the wallet and telling SN how to identify it; but all the connection, to allow sats to flow to and from it, is basically an exercise left to the reader?

Mhh, channel management could be part of our planned guides