Agreed, you could put them into a single module file without an issue then you can use a "proper" code editor like VScode as well which is nice.
However, you are correct that it can be annoying if you have to restart a lot during development. On my dev machine, Node-RED is started manually via nodemon or PM2 with watches in place so it auto-restarts when certain files like settings.js and external modules change. Helps a little.
You could put it on the first tab with an inject set to go off upon Node-RED startup that creates the object. The first tab always executes first.
Then, once the functions stabilise, move them to a module.
