My dev environment has the database with mock data, the backend, etc all running there. I would never connect to the production cluster. I don't need to VPN into another cluster to run locally.
Even if I have a dev cluster/namespace, then I will run the code I'm currently developing there. That's the point of a dev cluster. (Tilt for example can do both: a local cluster (minikube/k3d/...) or a remote test cluster)
I don't understand in what situation you have an app that needs to partially run in the cluster and needs to partially run on your machine.