A strip of tile narrower than 50 mm at a wall or corner is a common failure: it snaps on the cutter, loosens after a few months, or leaves an ugly gap. Crews sometimes blame “house settlement.” More often the layout simply left a sliver.
Sliver Guard in Scalarcut treats edge cuts thinner than your minimum cut (default 50 mm) as fragile. It does not claim every wall can be cleared — it protects when math allows, suggests when you can still fix it in one tap, and warns honestly when the pattern is layout-hard.
Three layers
- Silent protect — When a safer origin or start point clears every sub-minimum strip, the engine shifts in the background. Snackbar: Slivers eliminated. The Layout start-point control updates to match.
- Suggest — When your numbers still trap a strip after the best origin try, Layout offers one-tap actions: apply a suggested start, try center, or widen the joint (grout) when a small bump clears the conflict. Grout is never changed silently (it affects cost).
- Detect & warn — When the lattice cannot clear (common with herringbone / bond_cross at openings), fragile cuts stay listed and highlighted. We will not invent a non-sliver cut list that lies about pieces.
Why 50 mm
Porcelain and ceramic need enough width for glue contact and a clean cut. Under ~50 mm, the piece has little bond area and breaks easily. You can raise or lower the minimum in the planner if your tiler asks for a different floor (for example 60 mm on a large-format slab).
What to do when you see a warning
- Use the Layout recovery actions (suggested start, center, or widen grout) or change the installation starting point radios.
- Adjust minimum cut, tile size, or joint width if needed.
- On herringbone near windows/doors, expect layer 3 more often — review FRAGILE rows with the installer before ordering.
- Export a Project Blueprint so the diagram matches the cut list you hand to the crew.
Symmetrical starts often leave two similar edge cuts instead of one full tile and one dangerous sliver — more work on the cutter, fewer callbacks.
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