diff --git a/src/browser/run/quickjs-host.ts b/src/browser/run/quickjs-host.ts
index 2bc1ff1fd..82569ce6d 100644
--- a/src/browser/run/quickjs-host.ts
+++ b/src/browser/run/quickjs-host.ts
@@ -601,6 +601,9 @@ export class QuickJSHost {
   #toError(prefix: string, errorHandle: QuickJSHandle): Error {
     const dumped = this.#context.dump(errorHandle);
     const normalized = this.#normalizeHostError(dumped);
+    // Errors the sandbox raised deliberately already say what went wrong; prefixing
+    // them with a host-internal stage name only misdirects whoever reads the failure.
+    if (normalized.code?.startsWith('BROWSER_RUN_')) return normalized;
     normalized.message = `${prefix}: ${normalized.message}`;
     return normalized;
   }
diff --git a/src/browser/run/runner.test.ts b/src/browser/run/runner.test.ts
index a35796e97..9ea06fba4 100644
--- a/src/browser/run/runner.test.ts
+++ b/src/browser/run/runner.test.ts
@@ -20,7 +20,6 @@ import {
 } from 'playwright-core';
 import { LocalBrowserRunArtifactSink } from './artifacts.js';
 import { MemorySnapshotBaselineStore } from '../snapshot/index.js';
-import { MemorySnapshotBaselineStore } from '../snapshot/index.js';
 import { unsupportedApiMessage } from './playwright-transport.js';
 import { QuickJSHost } from './quickjs-host.js';
 import { runBrowserProgram } from './runner.js';
@@ -56,6 +55,15 @@ function run(source: string, options = {}, input = {}) {
   }, source, options);
 }
 
+async function runError(source: string): Promise<Error & { code?: string; hint?: string }> {
+  try {
+    await run(source);
+  } catch (cause) {
+    return cause as Error & { code?: string; hint?: string };
+  }
+  throw new Error('expected the program to fail');
+}
+
 describeWithChromium('runBrowserProgram', () => {
 beforeAll(async () => {
   browser = await chromium.launch({ headless: true });
@@ -232,6 +240,26 @@ afterAll(async () => {
 
     expect(output.result).toBe('undefined');
   });
+  it('reports the caller line, column, and source for a compile error', async () => {
+    // An unescaped quote ends the string early; the parser trips on what follows.
+    // Line/column must be the caller's own, not the AsyncFunction wrapper's.
+    const error = await runError("const a = 1;\nconst s = 'x'y';\nreturn a;");
+
+    expect(error.code).toBe('BROWSER_RUN_SYNTAX_ERROR');
+    expect(error.message).toContain('at line 2, column 14');
+    expect(error.message).toContain("const s = 'x'y';");
+    expect(error.message).not.toContain('QuickJS promise rejected');
+    expect(error.hint).toContain('unescaped quote');
+  });
+
+  it('does not blame the caller syntax for a runtime SyntaxError', async () => {
+    // JSON.parse throws a SyntaxError from a program that compiled fine.
+    const error = await runError("return JSON.parse('1,2,3');");
+
+    expect(error.code).toBeUndefined();
+    expect(error.name).toBe('SyntaxError');
+    expect(error.hint).toBeUndefined();
+  });
   it('publishes the browser-run package subpath', () => {
     const packageJson = JSON.parse(
       fs.readFileSync(new URL('../../../package.json', import.meta.url), 'utf8'),
diff --git a/src/browser/run/runner.ts b/src/browser/run/runner.ts
index 290a73990..b6d8432dd 100644
--- a/src/browser/run/runner.ts
+++ b/src/browser/run/runner.ts
@@ -93,7 +93,6 @@ function normalizeExecutionError(error: unknown): Error {
     );
   }
   const message = error instanceof Error ? error.message : String(error);
-  const errorKind = error instanceof Error ? error.name : '';
   const unsupported = message.match(/BROWSER_RUN_API_UNSUPPORTED:\s*(.*)/s)
     ?? message.match(/(File paths? are unavailable in the QuickJS sandbox[^.]*)/i);
   if (unsupported) {
@@ -115,13 +114,10 @@ function normalizeExecutionError(error: unknown): Error {
       'Browser-run execution exceeded its memory limit.',
     );
   }
-  if (/syntaxerror/i.test(`${errorKind}: ${message}`)) {
-    return new BrowserRunError(
-      'BROWSER_RUN_SYNTAX_ERROR',
-      sanitize(message),
-      'Fix the browser-run JavaScript syntax and retry.',
-    );
-  }
+  // A compile failure of the caller's program is tagged BROWSER_RUN_SYNTAX_ERROR where it
+  // happens and returned by the code.startsWith('BROWSER_RUN_') branch above. Every
+  // SyntaxError reaching here is therefore a runtime one — JSON.parse on malformed input is
+  // the common case — so it keeps its own name and message like any other runtime error.
   const normalized = new Error(sanitize(message));
   normalized.name = error instanceof Error ? error.name : 'Error';
   return normalized;
@@ -489,14 +485,43 @@ export async function runBrowserProgram(
           connection.close(message);
           rejectRun?.(new Error(message));
         };
+        globalThis.__webcmdCompileError = (source, cause) => {
+          // new AsyncFunction(body) prepends two lines of wrapper, so QuickJS reports
+          // a line two ahead of the one the caller actually wrote.
+          const lines = source.split('\\n');
+          const line = (cause?.lineNumber ?? 0) - 2;
+          const column = cause?.columnNumber ?? 0;
+          const text = line >= 1 && line <= lines.length ? lines[line - 1] : undefined;
+          let excerpt = '';
+          if (text !== undefined) {
+            const start = Math.max(0, column - 60);
+            const caret = ' '.repeat(Math.max(0, column - 1 - start)) + '^';
+            excerpt = '\\n  ' + text.slice(start, column + 20) + '\\n  ' + caret;
+          }
+          const where = line >= 1 ? ' at line ' + line + ', column ' + column : '';
+          const message = cause?.message ?? 'Program failed to compile.';
+          const error = new SyntaxError(message + where + excerpt);
+          error.code = 'BROWSER_RUN_SYNTAX_ERROR';
+          error.hint = 'Your program failed to compile; the browser was never touched. '
+            + 'A common cause is an unescaped quote when embedding a URL or HTML in a '
+            + 'string literal — use double quotes or a template literal for values that '
+            + 'contain apostrophes.';
+          return error;
+        };
         globalThis.__webcmdRun = async source => {
           const AsyncFunction = Object.getPrototypeOf(async function () {}).constructor;
+          let program;
+          try {
+            program = new AsyncFunction(source);
+          } catch (cause) {
+            throw __webcmdCompileError(source, cause);
+          }
           let value;
           try {
             const cancellation = new Promise((_resolve, reject) => {
               rejectRun = reject;
             });
-            value = await Promise.race([new AsyncFunction(source)(), cancellation]);
+            value = await Promise.race([program(), cancellation]);
           } finally {
             rejectRun = undefined;
           }