Edit: The issue is using a new environment without ipykernel installed (not a dependency of the conda package). With ipykernel, I can exit nbterm and even evaluate cells
I used to use a matplotlib backend that worked with ITerm2 for coding in a remote server (standard technique, that I also cover in my Hy language book). Adding Nbterm would also be useful. Off topic, but it is sometimes just (much) better to do development on a remote server with much more compute and faster Internet connections.
I don’t generally install from the GitHub repo. I know that Hy is no big deal, just a Lisp skin on top of Python, but I really enjoy using it. Hy is an example of “done” software: it was written years ago, and just does what it is meant to. I have noticed comments on Reddit about Hy not being actively maintained, but as I said, it is “done.”