I feel you, for those reasons I ended up creating a [template](https://github.com/AlexITC/chrome-scalajs-template) for building browser extensions with scalajs, if typed languages are your way, I suggest you to give a try.

Thank you! Chrome extensions are definitely a great way to get familiar with Chrome's APIs and what's possible in the browser, as well as Javascript in general. I think the boilerplate and setup is a big barrier to entry for a lot of people since it seems quite tedious at first glance, so that was a big driving factor in creating this.