Lists are very explicitly not intended to contain TODO items.

Checkboxes provide a bit of this functionality, sort of a ‘TODO lite’

I use something like this quite a lot:

** TODO notes from meeting        :meeting:steve:susan:jane:bob:action:

   DEADLINE: <2014-09-19 Fri>

   :PROPERTIES:

   :LastWorked: [2014-09-18 Thu 09:14]

  :END:

- Item 1

- Item 2

- [ ] action item 1

  - [X] sub action item

  - [ ] sub action item 2

- Item 3

extended meeting notes here

 

I’ve not used them at all, but there may be a way to set a statistics cookie for the headline, or if not a simple function to update a statistics-type cookie or property when an action item changes state

 

I do sometimes wish that I could include a TODO headline or tag a list item, but that is simply not possible under current implementations.

IE something like this:

** meeting

- TODO Item 1 tags: “tag1:tag2” LastWorked: [2014-09-18 Thu 09:14]

- item 2

 

With properties etc. handled in a way similar to BEGIN_SRC block headers

 

The problem is that list items/checkbox items are NOT headlines, and all the TODO code etc. is tied to headlines.

 

I haven’t looked at the code but I suspect an extensive rewrite to integrate it with the rest of the headline code.  Not as much if it’s kept as an isolated extension.