> TRAMP rarely seemed worth it to fiddle with, especially when such a workflow supports all tools

The problem is that this workflow doesn't support all tools (or even most tools in my case). The remote machines are a different OS with more RAM and are set up with all the tools and production environments needed. I can't run most of the locally (at least not without massive effort and porting). If you have an environment where you can easily run locally or remotely, then your workflow would make sense.