Kiss cut vs through cut
Kiss cut slices the peel-off sticker but leaves its backing sheet whole; through cut slices every layer into a loose shaped sticker.
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What it is
A kiss cut stops after slicing the sticker face and adhesive, leaving the release liner intact. That is how several peelable shapes can live on one sheet, or one sticker can sit inside an easy-to-hold rectangular backing. A through cut goes through the printed face, adhesive, and liner, producing a loose piece whose outer edge is the cut shape.
Choose kiss cut for sticker sheets, tiny shapes, and handouts that need room for instructions or branding on the liner. Choose through cut when the object itself should have the silhouette, like a laptop sticker sold as an individual piece. Shops often call both results 'die-cut stickers,' even when a Roland or Graphtec plotter blade, not a steel rule die, made the cut.
Gotcha: the cut path is not the artwork edge. Both versions need bleed outside the path and a safe margin inside it, and through-cut stickers often need a small printed border so normal cutting drift is not obvious. State which layers the blade must cross, because 'contour cut' alone does not answer that question.
Ask AI for it
Prepare this sticker artwork in Adobe Illustrator with a single closed vector contour stroked in a spot-color swatch named CutContour, the name Roland VersaWorks looks for, on its own top layer. Add 3mm bleed outside the contour and keep text 3mm inside it. Deliver two labeled versions: a kiss-cut sheet where only face stock and adhesive are cut, and a through-cut version where the blade crosses face stock, adhesive, and release liner. Export each as PDF/X-4 with the contour preserved as a spot-color path.