Pantheon recommends development on the platform, rather than on a local environment. However, many developers prefer the small footprint and fast start-up times with local development where sites run in virtual machines and don’t require Internet access.
A few quality options that also have good Drupal integration are:
Drush is a command line shell and scripting interface for Drupal. Using Drush is an alternative to using the browser user interface to push commands. We highly recommend developers use this tool.
Drush also works in conjunction with Terminus and can drastically reduce the time it takes do tasks like add a new user, update a site, create a sub-theme, view error logs, and issue passwords.
By using Terminus, a site administrator can massively reduce the time spent on relatively simple tasks.
The latest version of Pantheon's CLI, Terminus, incorporates not only Drush and WP-CLI, but also the vast majority of tasks available to you within the Pantheon Dashboard. You can create new sites, clone one environment to another, create branches, check for upstream updates, and more. Not comfortable with the command line? Develop on Pantheon directly with SFTP Mode