:keys is just documentation

[{[:todo-list/by-id 1] (om/get-query TodoItem)}] this query looks funny

I would maybe recommend you use read-local from https://github.com/untangled-web/untangled-client/blob/master/src/untangled/client/impl/om_plumbing.cljs#L15 as your read function and try to get things working after that

it's interesting that you want (get-in st [:todo-list/by-id 1]) to be a vector, I'm not sure if that can work