A related tool that I've found useful over the years is Unison [1]. Think of it as rsync where you can interactively adjust the reconciliation algorithm between the two sides of the sync connection. It stores a hash of the file contents from the previous run for each file, so it can work out whether each side has changed since the last run. It then presents you with a GUI (or TUI) to review and adjust the reconciliation.
For the periods of my career where I've lived the two computer life (desktop and laptop), I've used Unison to keep substantial parts of my home directory in sync between the two machines.