Which one should I pick for a new project?

I can only meaningfully answer this by explaining what each library does—they serve fundamentally different purposes, so the choice depends on your project's needs.

facebookexperimental/recoil is a state management library for React apps. It provides fine-grained reactivity and helps manage complex application state beyond what React's built-in hooks offer. However, the RepoPilot analysis flags it as WAIT — Stale (last commit 2 years ago), which is a significant concern for a new project. The OpenSSF Scorecard is 7.4/10 with weak coverage in best practices, token permissions, and fuzzing.

lodash/lodash is a utility library providing ~200 helper functions for working with arrays, objects, strings, etc. (e.g., _.head(), _.intersection(), etc.). It's mature and widely used, though less relevant if you're building modern React with ES6+ built-ins.

For a new project:

• If you need React state management: Consider alternatives to Recoil given its staleness. Look at actively maintained options like Redux Toolkit, Zustand, or Jotai.
• If you need general JavaScript utilities: Lodash is still viable for compatibility, though modern JavaScript often reduces the need for it.

The decision isn't "Recoil vs Lodash"—they're orthogonal tools. Pick based on your actual problem domain, then evaluate maintenance status and community activity.

FOLLOW_UPS:

• What are Recoil's core use cases compared to Redux?
• Does Recoil have active maintenance or community forks?
• Is Lodash still recommended for modern JavaScript projects?