I have that need and I do work offline, but I just use an extra cheap device like a Windows tablet. It's useless for interactive work, but works fine as a node

I have that need and I do work offline, but I just use an extra cheap device like a Windows tablet. It's useless for interactive work, but works fine as a node server. That reminds me, it runs Win 10, so I might try deploying Win 10 Ubuntu on it. I don't think this device is needed. I can just as easily use a Chromebook, which can run a full Linux development environment, and not tie up my iPad as an extra screen. There are products in the market to dump SD card onto a storage device with one button, although you could just use a GPIO pin and add a switch to your Pi to accomplish that.