Persistent 'flow' state for automations

When I started creating automations in home assistant I leaned to Node red for a couple reasons,

Lately the build in editor has become more feature complete like copypasting etc

One thing i had in node red was a flow state e.g a state available in the context of the ‘automation’
This can be achieved by using a helper but i feel like creating a helper for every case can become quite bulky, + helpers have a history, the flow state would only need to keep the latest state.

If there is an alternative i would love to hear it.