http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2231902/originate-edit-of-remote-file-using-emacs-tramp-from-ssh-session has a fairly simple accepted answer which amounts to (setq server-use-tcp t) (setq server-host "name_of_local_machine") (server-start) ;; Maybe also muck with `server-auth-dir` and then use emacsclient -f ~/.emacs.d/server/server /`hostname`:/path/to/local/file There is also http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12546722/using-emacs-server-and-emacsclient-on-other-machines-as-other-users which is more complex but where the answers also (roughly) touch similar bases.