How do you position your nuts?

Do you cut the fretboard off at the template zero fret position, shortening the fretboard by half a kerf width?

3/32" short, for nut compensation. I used to cut through the zero fret. Half a kerf short is better than nothing, but the B string is never quite right without full nut compensation.

Hi Brad,
Cutting the first fret short is a simple way to add some compensation at the nut. It improves the compensation between frets 1 to 12 a little bit. There are ways to better compensate the nut, but they get somewhat tedious, and also take into consideration the type of strings the player uses.
James Taylor did a video on tuning a guitar (with the typical uncompensated nut) where he tunes the open strings slightly flat a different number of "cents", depending on the string, to make the guitar play more in tune with itself. It helps compensate for string stiffness which makes the upper partials play sharp and some "string stretch" caused by fretting. Using this reasoning, by shortening the nut 3 cents you could tune the high e to pitch and flat the b 3cents, flat the g 1cent, flat the D 5cents, flat the A 7cents, and flat the E 9cents. By slanting the nut as we do the saddle, a further reduction in the flatting of the strings could be achieved, and by moving the break point of each individual string a fully compensated nut can be made.
To shorten the nut by 3 cents for a 25.4 inch S.L. (645mm) you would cut the fret board short about .042" (1mm) or about 3/64inches. Unfortunately real world parameters can throw things off a bit from the theoretical so most of us just cut - it - short a bit so we can - cut things short - a bit.
Anyway - here is a link to Mr. Taylor's video of the method he uses to make his Olson guitar play the way he likes it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2xnXArjPts&t=66s

Hi guitarjtb,
The original scale length should be used to figure the compensation at the saddle - the 12th fret should remain in its original position.

I that correctly typed?
3/32 I work out at 2.38 mm, that's almost 1/10", seems a lot?

If you shorten the distance from the 0 fret to the 12th fret, won't this cause the saddle to be moved closer to the 12th fret as well, if you use 0 to 12 as a reference point for the distance from the 12th to the saddle? Or do you use the original 0 to 12 distance, before shortening the board, to determine the location of the saddle?
Asking for a friend.:>)

"I do about a half kerf"

I don't worry about it. I glue the bridge on without a saddle slot, string it up, then determine where the saddle has to sit for intonation to be just right (using temporary mini-saddles for each string), mark the locations, then rout the slot. This way, I don't have to sweat bridge location too much during gluing; ballpark is OK. It requires having enough open space on the bridge to cut the slot where it needs to be, a little this way or that way.