Is it possible to make changes directly on the production site via SFTP text editor or GIT client, and use the cPanel automatic deployment model?

The automatic deployment in cPanel starts with pulling from a remote repo like GitHub, that requires a repo URL. Does that mean that I must make all the changes to my site on GitHub, if I want to use the cPanel automatic deployment? I would like to use my favorite SFTP capable text editor or GIT client (Sublime Merge) instead, and make the changes directly on the live site, or locally from a local repository on my laptop. Is it possible to use the automatic deployment so that the changes are made locally or via SFTP directly to the live files, instead of starting out making the changes on GitHub?