So I made one big tcz tonight which is around 13MB. It contains everything for ppp, hostapd, wifi, curl, and w1. I saved all the /etc/ppp config stuff amongst other things in a mydata.tgz instead of including it in the tcz itself, for obvious reasons.
Not done yet, but this project which has been at least 4 years in the making, will be to report ambient temperature of our travel trailer while we are out and about and leaving the dog behind. I think the logic will be, connect to wifi if available, cron job will send temperature using curl via email to sms address to my cell phone. If wifi isn't available, then use cellular modem. If neither is available, start hostapd for troubleshooting.
All the pieces are tested, just need to glue it all together.