I created user state directories by running qubesctl state.sls qubes.user-dirs per the community Qubes Salt Beginner's Guide.

The correspondence between this repository and my dom0 filesystem is:

• salt: contents of /srv/user_salt

I apply states by running commands like

qubesctl state.highstate  # configure everything in dom0
qubesctl state.highstate test=True  # only dry-run changes
qubesctl --targets=web-dvm state.highstate  # additionally configure inside web-dvm
qubesctl --targets=web-dvm --skip-dom0 state.highstate  # fix something in web-dvm without touching dom0