For the most part, Grunt is a framework that allows developers to package and configure the various tools available to web application developers in a uniform fashion. In the Grunt sphere, tools are packaged into what are called plugins, and these plugin packages all conform to Grunt operation and configuration conventions.
Some of the more popular plugins are provided by the Grunt core team, but all the others are contributed by the community of developers that use Grunt in their projects. Now that we're making use of Grunt in our project, we are part of this community, and we can take it upon ourselves to assist in the creation and maintenance of these plugins.