That's correct. They are a bit different. However, with many of the node-red-contrib modules, I can do things like "watch twitter for certain #tags, send them

That's correct. They are a bit different. However, with many of the node-red-contrib modules, I can do things like "watch twitter for certain #tags, send them to IRC along with a semantic analysis. Also log to MongoDB. And any @ send to my email every sunup." The basic functionality of the core nodes is already impressive, but the contrib is where Node-Red shines.