They are two widely used tools in the web dev industry. The developer of this CSS framework is simply supporting users of those tools, they're not deserving of this criticism.

But I do agree that web dev tooling could use a lot of work. Grd did not set out to solve that.

I agree it's not "insane" to include NPM, but I do feel a trend of over complicating things that should be simple.

A 4 page static website, for example, shouldn't need model view controller, package manager, routing, etc.

How is a simple package.json file included in the repo "over complicating things"?

The question is at which point you feel the need for a package manager.

I tend to err on the side working as simple as possible. Adding tools only when things seem like they can get out of hand, not before.