Good setup to work remotely on selhosted files and applicants

I want a set-up with a capable workstation accessed by a thin client laptop. Workstation hosts all files and applicants. I'm thinking of two solutions. Syncthing running on laptop and syncing necessary files. Needs replicating big chunk of file system. Not sure how well syncthing deals with conflicts. It had difficulty syncing git repos. Thin client connects over VPN by remote desktop and basically stores little locally. Which of these two ways is better? Anyone has such setup?