> I shouldn't be expected to pull down changes and test locally (unless that part can be automated and made super easy to do without fuss).

It's super easy and there's no fuss. You literally just switch branches. It's really easy to think the experience is analogous to code but it's not really. There's not a complex IDE setup or any complex local environment setup -- so it really is like just pull the branch open your browser, navigate to your website and test the changes.