The documentation seems to be outdated, I created a ticket to fix it PY-29289.
Remote notebook support requires clarification: PyCharm doesn't support running notebooks with remote interpreters: PY-26328. But it supports a connection to Jupyter notebook or Jupyterhub server running on the remote machine: PY-14605. The latter requires:
- a running notebook server or jupyterhub on the remote machine
- correct credentials setup as covered by the existed documentation
Remote interpreter, in this case, is only required for a proper code highlighting and inspections. Theoretically one can skip it completely.
Current documentation lacks a good complete setup guide, I created an internal ticket for documentation team to rewrite the corresponding page. Meanwhile, I found the notebook server documentation to be a good step-by-step reference for remote machine configuration if you are interested in this approach.