Sometime it would be nice if you could only apply a single object on a remote host, like this:

__file /need/this/now --state present --source $(pwd -P)/myfile --mode 0755

Using the initial manifest option (-i) and stdin makes this easy:

echo "__file /need/this/now --state present --source $(pwd -P)/myfile --mode 0755" | cdist config -v -i - targethost

For more information about cdist visit the cdist homepage.