diff --git a/.gitea/workflows/dev.yaml b/.gitea/workflows/dev.yaml
index 6d56911..06ebb83 100644
--- a/.gitea/workflows/dev.yaml
+++ b/.gitea/workflows/dev.yaml
@@ -154,6 +154,13 @@ jobs:
       - name: Touch HTML placeholder files
         run: touch src/index.html src/about.html src/terms.html src/enterprise-terms.html
 
+      - name: Create soul-demo-image.tar placeholder
+        # Dockerfile.stage COPYs this file (used by k3s at runtime).
+        # For the dev smoke test the k3s import fails silently — the landing
+        # server still comes up on :8080. Real tar is built by build-stage.sh
+        # in the deploy pipeline; here we just need the COPY to succeed.
+        run: touch dist/soul-demo-image.tar
+
       - name: Build Docker image (local only — no push)
         run: |
           set -euo pipefail