[kccqzy]

The most direct way of solving the immediate problem is to make transitions idempotent. Why must it be an error to complete an already complete TODO? Completing an already complete TODO should be a no-op. That simplifies things greatly.

Of course many actions logically cannot be made idempotent, but for the subset that can, do it as much as possible.

[a_wild_dandan]

Exposing invalid transitions to a user is a bug. Idempotency here doesn't solve anything, just hides said bug, which is arguably worse.

[antonvs]

A race condition for which of multiple concurrent users initiated a transition is not a bug, it's a scenario that commonly needs to be handled. In many cases, idempotency can be a simple and effective approach for handling this.