Just to repeat (and expand on) what I said in the very same slack conversation:
I strongly feel there is a place for some form of these tools in the core of Node-RED; some basic capabilities that will greatly enhance the flow editing experience. Having lots of people create their own plugins is a great learning experience for them, but it doesn't moving the core Node-RED forward at all. We already have the Node-RED Flow Debugger plugin - a lot of these are natural extensions of what it does already - but we haven't had a single contribution to that plugin.
There's nothing wrong with that; its open source and no-one is under any obligation to contribute. It just puts the burden on a small few to try to move things forward when there's already a long wish list of items like this.
