diff --git a/engine/resources/deploy_tar.go b/engine/resources/deploy_tar.go
index 02cd007f..3b5648c7 100644
--- a/engine/resources/deploy_tar.go
+++ b/engine/resources/deploy_tar.go
@@ -61,6 +61,8 @@ func init() {
 // TODO: support send/recv to send the output instead of writing to a file?
 // TODO: This resource is very similar to the tar resource. Update that one if
 // this changes, or consider porting this to use that as a composite resource.
+// TODO: consider using a `deploy.get_archive()` function to make a .tar, and a
+// file resource to store those contents on disk with whatever mode we want...
 type DeployTar struct {
 	traits.Base // add the base methods without re-implementation
 
diff --git a/examples/lang/deploy-tar.mcl b/examples/lang/deploy-tar.mcl
index 767d3dc0..b6653fa7 100644
--- a/examples/lang/deploy-tar.mcl
+++ b/examples/lang/deploy-tar.mcl
@@ -1,3 +1,30 @@
-# This builds a tar archive with a copy of our deploy.
-deploy:tar "/tmp/somedeploy.tar" {
+import "deploy"
+
+file "/tmp/mgmt/" {
+	state => $const.res.file.state.exists,
+	recurse => true, # XXX: BUG: deploy:tar is purged without a file tag
+	purge => true,
+	#owner => "root",
+	#group => "root",
+	#mode => "u=rwx,g=rx,o=", # dir
 }
+
+# This builds a tar archive with a copy of our deploy.
+deploy:tar "/tmp/mgmt/somedeploy1.tar" {
+
+	Depend => File["/tmp/mgmt/"], # make the dir first!
+}
+
+# Tag this so that the folder purge doesn't remove it.
+file "/tmp/mgmt/somedeploy1.tar" {
+	mode => "u=rw,g=rw,o=rw", # file
+
+	Meta:retry => -1, # changing the mode on this file can be racy
+}
+
+# Alternatively:
+#file "/tmp/mgmt/somedeploy2.tar" {
+#	state => $const.res.file.state.exists,
+#	content => deploy.get_archive(), # TODO: implement me
+#	mode => "u=rw,g=rw,o=rw", # file
+#}