For a while I wanted "kate but with ability to connect to remote server" but couldn't find anything.
sshfs didn't work, nfs would be janky so I gave up and ended just using vim (which frankly isn't *great* for working on big projects).
Yesterday "gram" came up in a discussion, which seemed slop-free, offered vim keybinds, ability to connect to remote system over ssh and seemed to look/work just like kate (for the most part)... and is exactly what I was looking for.
Having LSP is surprisingly useful (faster than grepping for stuff), and as a bonus the editor has froggo as an icon.
Maybe it'll help someone looking for neovim replacement or something, it's very comf