diff --git a/news/changelog-1.8.md b/news/changelog-1.8.md
index 353ea23ff52..10dcd0d2841 100644
--- a/news/changelog-1.8.md
+++ b/news/changelog-1.8.md
@@ -76,6 +76,7 @@ All changes included in 1.8:
 - ([#12727](https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/issues/12727)): Do not crash in the presence of malformed tabset contents.
 - ([#12806](https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/pull/12806)): Use pandoc APIs to handle codepage conversion on Windows.
 - ([#12811](https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/pull/12811)): Add support for YouTube Shorts in `video` shortcode.
+- ([#13128](https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/issues/13128)): Meta shortcode could crash on bad input.
 
 ## Commands
 
diff --git a/src/resources/filters/quarto-pre/shortcodes-handlers.lua b/src/resources/filters/quarto-pre/shortcodes-handlers.lua
index 5387db9f355..ce75e5b1a96 100644
--- a/src/resources/filters/quarto-pre/shortcodes-handlers.lua
+++ b/src/resources/filters/quarto-pre/shortcodes-handlers.lua
@@ -287,7 +287,7 @@ function processValue(val, name, t)
     elseif pandoc.utils.type(val) == "Blocks" then
       return pandoc.utils.blocks_to_inlines(val)
     elseif pandoc.utils.type(val) == "List" and #val == 1 then
-      return processValue(val[1])
+      return processValue(val[1], name, t)
     else
       warn("Unsupported type '" .. pandoc.utils.type(val)  .. "' for key " .. name .. " in a " .. t .. " shortcode.")
       return { pandoc.Strong(pandoc.Inlines { pandoc.Str("?invalid " .. t .. " type:" .. name) } ) }
diff --git a/tests/docs/smoke-all/shortcodes/meta-bad-data.qmd b/tests/docs/smoke-all/shortcodes/meta-bad-data.qmd
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..8cb4ce523da
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/docs/smoke-all/shortcodes/meta-bad-data.qmd
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+---
+bad-meta: [[1,2]]
+---
+
+{{< meta bad-meta >}}