Cool - would be great to get a 2nd set of eyes on it. Once I push a branch, I can provide instructions for running from source (if you need them)
Will that be a node-red build? I haven't done that, but I think it is documented somewhere so can probably work it out with a small amount of guidance.
I see from the HiveMQ videos that MQTT v5 offers other new features that could be valuable to Node-red, eg shared subscriptions, enhanced authentication, user properties.
Will this new node support these features too? No idea how much coding beyond extra config options would be needed!
Yes. But not introduced here - the mqtt in and out nodes already support all of these v5 features (I added those a few years back).