This is a good idea, but at the same time it shows a weakness of chrome extensions' design. If there is a need for such a skeleton app, then the technology stack should have it built in - so that a template is not needed at all!
Really? I see it more as a framework, similar to any other language's or technology's. To make a bit of a reaching analogy, I don't think HTML is weak just because Twitter's Bootstrap is useful. If you want to roll your own solution every time, have at it. But if you want to have a great starting point, this looks like it could help speed things up.
That's not a good analogy. With chrome extension you (almost) always need a background.html, background.js, popup.html, etc. Perhaps chrome extensions would be better if you started by defining a class or writing functions without unnecessary html tags and files. This is a bit different than html and bootstrap where you often dont need most of the framework.
In a way, you're both right. Chrome Extension development is far more difficult to get started in than it should be. The documentation is lax at best and it's only starting to heat up, and the trouble one can have with Chrome having to be restarted all the time for the changes to take effect on Ubuntu (and maybe other OSs, I don't know) is highly discouraging. On the other hand, you really don't need anything I put together in order to develop an extension, but it's useful for getting off the ground faster.