The Maven Project IS the configuration. Intellij is only a shortcut. It let's you access configurations via click rather than via a command line expression.
In the end if you want to create a Maven Project configuration or edit the configuration it's on you to do it. At most intellij will just generate boilerplate for you.
No that's not how it works. IDEA has its own project files (*.iml, .idea), separate from Maven. We are talking about IDE projects which are separate from Maven.
Yes that's configuration for the IDE. But the project itself is configured off of Maven, the project files for the IDE are ADDITIONAL settings for the IDE itself.
For example in CLion you can't create a new target from the IDE, you have to edit the cmake file.
The Maven Project IS the configuration. Intellij is only a shortcut. It let's you access configurations via click rather than via a command line expression.
In the end if you want to create a Maven Project configuration or edit the configuration it's on you to do it. At most intellij will just generate boilerplate for you.