According to this article: https://aem.redquark.org/2018/10/day-03-setting-up-aem-development.html
You can add your local sever. I did this.
I already have the wknd app deployed previously from the command line (mvn clean install -PautoInstallSinglePackage)
What can I do with this connected instance? I presume I still need to use maven if I want to build and deploy my local changes (e.g. to core), so the server integration is not involved.
The article mentioned importing and exporting content. How does one do this?