diff --git a/roomserver/internal/input/input.go b/roomserver/internal/input/input.go
index 076e18d90..0187dd522 100644
--- a/roomserver/internal/input/input.go
+++ b/roomserver/internal/input/input.go
@@ -84,6 +84,19 @@ func (r *Inputer) startWorkerForRoom(roomID string) {
 		consumer := r.Cfg.Matrix.JetStream.Prefixed("RoomInput" + jetstream.Tokenise(w.roomID))
 		subject := r.Cfg.Matrix.JetStream.Prefixed(jetstream.InputRoomEventSubj(w.roomID))
 
+		// Create the consumer. We do this as a specific step rather than
+		// letting PullSubscribe create it for us because we need the consumer
+		// to outlive the subscription. If we do it this way, we can Bind in the
+		// next step, and when we Unsubscribe, the consumer continues to live. If
+		// we leave PullSubscribe to create the durable consumer, Unsubscribe will
+		// delete it because it thinks it "owns" it, which in turn breaks the
+		// interest-based retention storage policy.
+		// If the durable consumer already exists, this is effectively a no-op.
+		// Another interesting tid-bit here: the ACK policy is set to "all" so that
+		// if we acknowledge a message, we also acknowledge everything that comes
+		// before it. This is necessary because otherwise our consumer will never
+		// acknowledge things we filtered out for other subjects and therefore they
+		// will linger around forever.
 		if _, err := w.r.JetStream.AddConsumer(
 			r.Cfg.Matrix.JetStream.Prefixed(jetstream.InputRoomEvent),
 			&nats.ConsumerConfig{
@@ -98,6 +111,9 @@ func (r *Inputer) startWorkerForRoom(roomID string) {
 			return
 		}
 
+		// Bind to our durable consumer. We want to receive all messages waiting
+		// for this subject and we want to manually acknowledge them, so that we
+		// can ensure they are only cleaned up when we are done processing them.
 		sub, err := w.r.JetStream.PullSubscribe(
 			subject, consumer,
 			nats.ManualAck(),
@@ -110,20 +126,26 @@ func (r *Inputer) startWorkerForRoom(roomID string) {
 			return
 		}
 
-		logrus.Infof("Stream for room %q active", w.roomID)
+		// Go and start pulling messages off the queue.
 		w.subscription = sub
-		w.Act(nil, w.next)
+		w.Act(nil, w._next)
 	}
 }
 
-// onMessage is called when a new event arrives in the roomserver input stream.
+// Start creates an ephemeral non-durable consumer on the roomserver
+// input topic. It is configured to deliver us headers only because we
+// don't actually care about the contents of the message at this point,
+// we only care about the `room_id` field. Once a message arrives, we
+// will look to see if we have a worker for that room which has its
+// own consumer. If we don't, we'll start one.
 func (r *Inputer) Start() error {
 	_, err := r.JetStream.Subscribe(
-		"", // don't supply a subject because we're using BindStream
+		"", // This is blank because we specified it in BindStream.
 		func(m *nats.Msg) {
 			roomID := m.Header.Get(jetstream.RoomID)
 			r.startWorkerForRoom(roomID)
 		},
+		nats.HeadersOnly(),
 		nats.DeliverAll(),
 		nats.AckNone(),
 		nats.BindStream(r.InputRoomEventTopic),
@@ -131,18 +153,30 @@ func (r *Inputer) Start() error {
 	return err
 }
 
-func (w *worker) next() {
-	ctx, cancel := context.WithTimeout(w.r.ProcessContext.Context(), time.Second*30)
+// _next is called by the worker for the room. It must only be called
+// by the actor embedded into the worker.
+func (w *worker) _next() {
+	// Look up what the next event is that's waiting to be processed.
+	ctx, cancel := context.WithTimeout(w.r.ProcessContext.Context(), time.Minute)
 	defer cancel()
 	msgs, err := w.subscription.Fetch(1, nats.Context(ctx))
 	switch err {
 	case nil:
+		// Make sure that once we're done here, we queue up another call
+		// to _next in the inbox.
+		defer w.Act(nil, w._next)
+
+		// If no error was reported, but we didn't get exactly one message,
+		// then skip over this and try again on the next iteration.
 		if len(msgs) != 1 {
 			return
 		}
-		defer w.Act(nil, w.next)
+
 	case context.DeadlineExceeded:
-		logrus.Infof("Stream for room %q inactive", w.roomID)
+		// The context exceeded, so we've been waiting for more than a
+		// minute for activity in this room. At this point we will shut
+		// down the subscriber to free up resources. It'll get started
+		// again if new activity happens.
 		if err = w.subscription.Unsubscribe(); err != nil {
 			logrus.WithError(err).Errorf("Failed to unsubscribe to stream for room %q", w.roomID)
 		}
@@ -150,10 +184,12 @@ func (w *worker) next() {
 		w.subscription = nil
 		w.Unlock()
 		return
-	case nats.ErrTimeout:
-		w.Act(nil, w.next)
-		return
+
 	default:
+		// Something went wrong while trying to fetch the next event
+		// from the queue. In which case, we'll shut down the subscriber
+		// and wait to be notified about new room activity again. Maybe
+		// the problem will be corrected by then.
 		logrus.WithError(err).Errorf("Failed to get next stream message for room %q", w.roomID)
 		if err = w.subscription.Unsubscribe(); err != nil {
 			logrus.WithError(err).Errorf("Failed to unsubscribe to stream for room %q", w.roomID)
@@ -164,6 +200,9 @@ func (w *worker) next() {
 		return
 	}
 
+	// Try to unmarshal the input room event. If the JSON unmarshalling
+	// fails then we'll terminate the message — this notifies NATS that
+	// we are done with the message and never want to see it again.
 	msg := msgs[0]
 	var inputRoomEvent api.InputRoomEvent
 	if err = json.Unmarshal(msg.Data, &inputRoomEvent); err != nil {
@@ -174,6 +213,10 @@ func (w *worker) next() {
 	roomserverInputBackpressure.With(prometheus.Labels{"room_id": w.roomID}).Inc()
 	defer roomserverInputBackpressure.With(prometheus.Labels{"room_id": w.roomID}).Dec()
 
+	// Process the room event. If something goes wrong then we'll tell
+	// NATS to terminate the message. We'll store the error result as
+	// a string, because we might want to return that to the caller if
+	// it was a synchronous request.
 	var errString string
 	if err = w.r.processRoomEvent(w.r.ProcessContext.Context(), &inputRoomEvent); err != nil {
 		if !errors.Is(err, context.DeadlineExceeded) && !errors.Is(err, context.Canceled) {
@@ -189,6 +232,13 @@ func (w *worker) next() {
 	} else {
 		_ = msg.Ack()
 	}
+
+	// If it was a synchronous input request then the "sync" field
+	// will be present in the message. That means that someone is
+	// waiting for a response. The temporary inbox name is present in
+	// that field, so send back the error string (if any). If there
+	// was no error then we'll return a blank message, which means
+	// that everything was OK.
 	if replyTo := msg.Header.Get("sync"); replyTo != "" {
 		if err = w.r.NATSClient.Publish(replyTo, []byte(errString)); err != nil {
 			logrus.WithError(err).WithFields(logrus.Fields{
@@ -206,6 +256,10 @@ func (r *Inputer) InputRoomEvents(
 	request *api.InputRoomEventsRequest,
 	response *api.InputRoomEventsResponse,
 ) {
+	// If the request is synchronous then we need to create a
+	// temporary inbox to wait for responses on, and then create
+	// a subscription to it. If it's asynchronous then we won't
+	// bother, so these values will remain empty.
 	var replyTo string
 	var replySub *nats.Subscription
 	if !request.Asynchronous {
@@ -218,6 +272,8 @@ func (r *Inputer) InputRoomEvents(
 		}
 	}
 
+	// For each event, marshal the input room event and then
+	// send it into the input queue.
 	var err error
 	for _, e := range request.InputRoomEvents {
 		roomID := e.Event.RoomID()
@@ -246,10 +302,16 @@ func (r *Inputer) InputRoomEvents(
 		}
 	}
 
+	// If we aren't waiting for synchronous responses then we can
+	// give up here, there is nothing further to do.
 	if request.Asynchronous || replySub == nil {
 		return
 	}
 
+	// Otherwise, we'll want to sit and wait for the responses
+	// from the roomserver. There will be one response for every
+	// input we submitted. The last error value we receive will
+	// be the one returned as the error string.
 	defer replySub.Drain() // nolint:errcheck
 	for i := 0; i < len(request.InputRoomEvents); i++ {
 		msg, err := replySub.NextMsgWithContext(ctx)
@@ -259,7 +321,6 @@ func (r *Inputer) InputRoomEvents(
 		}
 		if len(msg.Data) > 0 {
 			response.ErrMsg = string(msg.Data)
-			return
 		}
 	}
 }