I don't see "needing" it as much as it being a guide to help people who are interested in investigating a new library or framework to become familiar with some of the more popular conventions and techniques.

Also, don't see why it hurts to start large projects with a skeleton, and having that skeleton removed eventually once the ground work has been laid out. Any constraints, albeit redundant at times, can help with initial stages.

I don't really understand your point here. You already have the huge "skeleton" of the browser, the OS, etc etc. And if you look at many other UI development technologies such as the Microsoft or Apple stacks, you'll see that they have a similar amount of "stuff" built in, you just don't have any choice in the matter. On the web we have more of a choice of what "skeleton" to use, at the cost of... having to make a choice.

If this is too onerous, you can still just write in vanilla JS.

Its not necessarially that I "need" a skeleton. If I needed to, I know I could do it all manually. I have manually configured a Node.js app before. But wouldn't it be a lot more prudent use of my time to start programming instead of doing project set-up, when I'm learning a new programming paradigm? Why do you think we fork repos?

I find a blank project slightly nerve wracking, so something like this is great.