We need a tool like yocto-bsp which will create a skeleton layer. In Darren's words: "There is plenty of boilerplate junk that is still just too easy to mess up, especially for newcomers." Sorry if this was submitted in the wrong category.
Paul, I think I can base this on the yocto-bsp codebase and hammer this out fairly quickly, so am volunteering to take it. If you've already made progress on this and/or want it back, let me know and/or take it back!
Pulled into poky/master starting with commit: http://git.yoctoproject.org/cgit/cgit.cgi/poky/commit/?id=792b1bf0147a72613e76ce8f88764e99c51b80eb
Verified with commit e5a2702653db082203455e3739d7838863c859ba, yocto-layer tool is available and can be used to create a skeleton layer.