I may be overlooking something simple but I've recently built an action extension in iOS 8.1 b2 on Xcode 6.1 GM 2.
If I run the extension through Xcode (selecting the scheme and running; it asks me to choose an app to open the extension in which I select "Photos") and the extension runs as expected. But if I detach and run the photos app not connected to Xcode the extension seems to crash. If I try to attach to Photos already running I get a "lost connection" error in Xcode.
I'm not really sure how to debug as it only occurs if I start the extension outside of Xcode.