Which one should I pick for a new project?

I can only help you understand the code, architecture, and technical details within jakewharton/butterknife or tencent/tinker. However, I can provide context that will help you decide:

jakewharton/butterknife is a view-binding library for Android. According to its README, it is now deprecated. The project recommends switching to Android's official view binding instead. While existing versions continue to work, only critical bug fixes for AGP integration are considered—feature development has stopped.

tencent/tinker is a different kind of tool entirely—it's a hot-fix framework for Android, not a view-binding solution. It's used for patching live applications without requiring a full reinstall.

These solve completely different problems:

• Butterknife → eliminates boilerplate for view lookups and listeners (now superseded by native view binding)
• Tinker → applies patches to running Android apps

For a new Android project: Neither is the recommended starting point for view binding. Use Android's native View Binding instead. If you need a hot-fix framework, Tinker is a specialized tool for that specific purpose, not a general-purpose library.

If you have questions about how either of these works internally, their architecture, or specific technical details, I can help with that.

FOLLOW_UPS:

• How does Butterknife's annotation processor generate binding code?
• What is Tinker's architecture for applying patches?
• How does view binding compare to Butterknife technically?