If it's a serious, non casual/on-the-spot usage work on a local copy and sync it, it does not matter if it's a repo or something you rsync/unison that's the top

If it's a serious, non casual/on-the-spot usage work on a local copy and sync it, it does not matter if it's a repo or something you rsync/unison that's the top performant, comfortable and safe way. Networked computing does not means do anything via network and desktops are not despite all tentative in this direction "endpoint" or modern dumb terminal of a remote mainframe-alike server. If it's casual edit you need to do ssh is enough, via TRAMP (who can work on various protocols transparently, not just ssh) if you are in Emacs or perhaps with sshfs for an editor-neutral solution (knowing it does not offer a full POSIX fs). For testing again ssh is a very common and friendly option.