diff --git a/cli/src/__tests__/scm-loader.test.ts b/cli/src/__tests__/scm-loader.test.ts
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..59f4fee8ed
--- /dev/null
+++ b/cli/src/__tests__/scm-loader.test.ts
@@ -0,0 +1,64 @@
+import { describe, expect, test } from 'bun:test'
+import { mkdtemp, rm } from 'fs/promises'
+import * as os from 'os'
+import * as path from 'path'
+
+import { scmTextModule } from '../../../test/setup-scm-loader'
+
+/**
+ * Import what the loader would emit. The loader's whole job is to hand the
+ * importer a module instead of a path, so a round trip through a real import is
+ * the only assertion that covers both the escaping and the default export.
+ */
+async function importEmitted(text: string): Promise<string> {
+  const dir = await mkdtemp(path.join(os.tmpdir(), 'scm-loader-'))
+  const file = path.join(dir, 'query.mjs')
+  try {
+    await Bun.write(file, scmTextModule(text))
+    const module = (await import(file)) as { default: string }
+    return module.default
+  } finally {
+    await rm(dir, { recursive: true, force: true })
+  }
+}
+
+describe('scm-text-loader', () => {
+  // The loader is a preload for `cd cli && bun test` (cli/bunfig.toml), so its
+  // test lives with the package that preloads it.
+  test('hands the importer the file text, not its path', async () => {
+    const query =
+      '(method_declaration name: (identifier) @name) @definition.method'
+
+    expect(await importEmitted(query)).toBe(query)
+  })
+
+  test('escapes text that would otherwise end the string literal', async () => {
+    // Real queries carry regexes with backslashes and quoted literals. The
+    // unescaped form is a syntax error, not a wrong query, so this asserts the
+    // module still evaluates and still carries every character.
+    const query = '(string_literal) @literal (#match? @literal "\\\\n")'
+
+    const emitted = scmTextModule(query)
+
+    expect(emitted).not.toContain('\n')
+    expect(await importEmitted(query)).toBe(query)
+  })
+
+  test('round-trips newlines and quotes', async () => {
+    const query = '(comment) @c\n// "quoted" \\ backslash\n(program) @p'
+
+    expect(await importEmitted(query)).toBe(query)
+  })
+
+  test('the queries it loads are real, non-empty text', async () => {
+    const file = path.join(
+      __dirname,
+      '../../../packages/code-map/src/tree-sitter-queries/tree-sitter-c_sharp-tags.scm',
+    )
+
+    const text = await Bun.file(file).text()
+
+    expect(text.length).toBeGreaterThan(0)
+    expect(await importEmitted(text)).toBe(text)
+  })
+})
diff --git a/test/setup-scm-loader.ts b/test/setup-scm-loader.ts
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..05722fafb5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/test/setup-scm-loader.ts
@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
+/**
+ * Loads `*.scm` tree-sitter query files as text.
+ *
+ * `cli/bunfig.toml` lists this file as a preload and `docs/testing.md` passes it
+ * to `bun test --preload`. Bun's default for an extension it does not know is to
+ * resolve the import to the file's *path*, so without this the query text
+ * `@codebuff/code-map` imports through the `@codebuff/sdk` barrel is a path.
+ * `createLanguageConfig` reads an absolute path back off disk as a fallback
+ * (`packages/code-map/src/languages.ts`), which is why the CLI still works when
+ * this loader is missing — but only because the path it gets happens to be
+ * absolute, and any bundler that inlines the import has no file to read.
+ *
+ * bun 1.3.14 has no `loader: 'text'`, so the contents are emitted as a JS module
+ * whose default export is the JSON-escaped text.
+ */
+import { plugin } from 'bun'
+
+/**
+ * The module bun should hand an importer in place of the `.scm` file.
+ *
+ * `JSON.stringify` is both the escaper and the quoting: it produces a literal
+ * JavaScript can evaluate back to the exact text, so a query containing
+ * backslashes, quotes or newlines survives the round trip.
+ */
+export function scmTextModule(text: string): string {
+  return `export default ${JSON.stringify(text)}`
+}
+
+plugin({
+  name: 'scm-text-loader',
+  setup(build) {
+    build.onLoad({ filter: /\.scm$/ }, async (args) => ({
+      contents: scmTextModule(await Bun.file(args.path).text()),
+      loader: 'js',
+    }))
+  },
+})