:_mod-docs-content-type: SNIPPET

//standard connector intro text
Kafka Connect uses a plugin architecture to provide the implementation artifacts for connectors.
Plugins allow connections to other systems and provide additional configuration to manipulate data.
Plugins include connectors and other components, such as data converters and transforms.
A connector operates with a specific type of external system.
Each connector defines a schema for its configuration.
You supply the configuration to Kafka Connect to create a connector instance within Kafka Connect.
Connector instances then define a set of tasks for moving data between systems.

Plugins provide a set of one or more artifacts that define a connector and task implementation for connecting to a given kind of data source.
The configuration describes the source input data and target output data to feed into and out of Kafka Connect.
The plugins might also contain the libraries and files needed to transform the data.

A Kafka Connect deployment can have one or more plugins, but only one version of each plugin.
Plugins for many external systems are available for use with Kafka Connect.
You can also create your own plugins.
