I made some significant progress here and had few more questions along the way:
- Is there an API endpoint that I can use to get all pinned topics? Similar to /latest.json or /top.json?
- Is there a JS command (assuming I am in a plugin) I can use to force the topic list to re-render, after I made a status change on on the the topic list items, so that the change is immediately reflected? I guess I have to work with an observer on topics.?
Also, I found the following article that has everything I need to customize the topic list that I want.