[tunaoftheland]

As an alternative to Jupyter UI and Emacs, Hydrogen (https://github.com/nteract/hydrogen) could be viable. It runs as an Atom extension and connects to a Jupyter server instance. I haven't used it for anything other than a minimal project, but I preferred its UX to that of the browser interface of Jupyter. Atom isn't my favorite editor, but it's pleasant for this particular use case. Looks like the same team also offers an Electron-based application instead of an Atom extension.

[tincholio]

That looks quite similar (though much nicer UI-wise) to EIN (the Emacs mode for jupyter). I guess if you're doing D3-based viz stuff it will be a better choice than EIN, as you can render those properly.