Hey Nick, glad to see someone get something from it a year later 
You don’t have to define variables via code view (step 5).
You can define it via UI in Layout settings in “Define Template Data”, as it shown in this Docs: Sever Side Rendering with NodeJS
I believe this puts everything in the ‘meta’ object though. So it’s not technically correct. But would probably work fine.
I’m referring to this: