I’ve mostly worked with JS in the browser and my understanding of node lacks nuance, but it seems like all of this would be mitigated drastically by building out the standard library. For comparison, here’s pythons list of standard modules:

https://docs.python.org/3/library/

They don’t make third party libraries obsolete— for example, I tried using the built-in IMAP library the other day and it’s definitely too low-level to make sense for most quick projects that check email, so I used a third party Library— but all of those modules are vetted, stable, and require no external dependencies.

I believe the node maintainers have staunchly opposed such measures. I don’t know what their reasoning is so I don’t have an opinion on whether or not it’s worth it.