This America's Test Kitchen recipe for Slow Cooker Chicken with "Roasted" Garlic Sauce has the ingredient:
bone-in split chicken breasts, skin and ribs removed, trimmed of all visible fat
The skin and ribs are never used in the recipe.
ATK generally does a great job of simplifying recipes but needing to de-bone the chicken rather than simply buying boneless, skinless chicken breasts seems silly. Plus, I generally find bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts to be harder to find than boneless, skinless chicken.
I asked my butcher if there's a difference between them doing it and doing it myself and he said that there wasn't (assuming they're never used).
Is there something my butcher didn't think of?
Yes, I know that there's a cost difference but let's ignore that, as that's not generally a consideration in ATK recipes.