Simple beginner question - Does Node Red addon replace automations in HA? If so, what are the advantages/disadvantages.
Thank you
NodeRed [NR] doesn’t replace automations, it is just another way of creating automations…
I myself run both, as i found some things ’easier’ to accomplish in NR, basically because it allows me to use plain java 
I know of people that use both. Node-RED is a more drag-and-drop way to create automations.
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Thank you.
I avoid nodered like the plague personally.
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And I use NR exclusively, and love it.
There is definitely not a “right” or “wrong” here. Both tools work fine, so you should try both and see which feels more intuitive for the way you think.
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And I avoid YAML for automations completely.
It’s a configuration file syntax. Who thought it would be a good idea to use this for programming automations? 
In fact I avoided HA at all for the last years because of that.
Just started to use this otherwise wonderful SmartHome solution again, as UI automations and Node-Red (in combination with JS for more compelx tasks) made it more appealing for me.
So like always: Different people <-> different preferences
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In the spirit of “no wrong way”, I use MSR / Reactor. This works well for me as it can striate automation logic across multiple controllers and/or device types. It’s a great development effort which has helped me migrate from Vera to HASS in a controlled / slow fashion.
Logger can indicate who was responsible for turning on/off an entity, such as a user or a particular automation. If the entity was turned on by a Node-Red flow, Home Assistant can’t tell you by which flow or even that it was by Node-Red (it will simply indicate it was performed by Supervisor, which is the usual way it indicates that something outside its immediate environment was responsible for the action). Node-Red users can correct me if I am wrong on this point.
Beyond that, it’s just a matter of personal preference as to which one, Node-Red flows or Home Assistant automations, suits you best.
This was a question that troubled me as a beginner and eventually i chose to use NR for all but the simplest automations. A lot depends on the way you think as a programmer and i found that a graphical flow suited me much better than yaml. Crucially it is easy to incorporate JavaScript functions in NR which is a big boost for procedural and or object oriented familiars. There an immense amount of contributed node modules that allow you to leverage typical programming paradigms and generic automation tasks. A good example is a finite state machine. Something that’s a huge benefit in programming home automations.