Lists are very explicitly not intended to contain TODO items.

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

...

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.