Anyone seen this: - https://levskaya.github.io/eschersketch/ Works quite well as a live sketch tiling tool. Possibly misnamed.
I see we have many of these reflection modes which can only be reached via Edit/Clone/CreateTiledClones... The modes for which are explained here: - http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/images/WallpaperTransformations.png linked from here: - http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/OnCanvasSymmetryTool I can see several pages here and there on proposals for an interactive UI. E.g. the one above, http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Tiled-Clones
It seems the paths can't be edited after tiling. I may be wrong about this but I can't work it out. (Only one shape can be selected at a time when hitting Create. I guess you have to group them first)
I found this tutorial - http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/Tiles.html
I seem to recall a lot of UI work was done on a way to make his work - maybe a year or more ago. I'm clearly using the wrong google search terms :( Did any of it make it into a release ? GSOC ?