Not sure what you mean, I do remote development all the time.
> and need a repl
Why do you need a lisp repl in sam? The unix shell is a repl too, and I use it in a separate terminal, which talks to sam via the Plan 9 plumber.
I use multiple terminals and sometimes even multiple sam instances, and I consider this a big plus, rather than doing everything through a single program.
> autoindent
Sam supports autoindent just fine. But perhaps you mean some other form of "smart" indent though.
You're right that sam (and acme) don't have features. The functionality comes from programs interacting with each other through the plumber or some other method.
As I'm running a Unix (Linux, at present), I really don't have the full power of the plumber at my disposal.
As for autoindent, I was talking about Lisp code, which most autoindenters don't indent properly. This is one of several reasons that the original vi had a dedicated mode for editing lisp code. Yes, really. You can look it up.
Anyways, I'm an emacs user. Saying we do everything through one program is like saying that every Smalltalk program is the same: we do everything through one VM. It's not as elegant, true, but it works right now. And outside of plan 9, acme and sam are a little hit and miss by comparison.