You pulled the arm of the slot machine and discovered why they call it the one-armed bandit.

Almost the exact same thing happened to me when I first tried opus, one prompt no output cost $60 in additional usage

I think the fable it's referring to is the "Emperor has No Clothes" - if this is even slightly similar to the Mythos hyped up to be too intelligent to release, I'm quite disappointed.

If this was a step change, e.g a Opus 5, I'd be pleased, it's definitely an upgrade on some work, but it's nothing like anthropics apocalyptical marketing seemed to suggest

I suspect the tasks you're trying just aren't complex enough. It's definitely a generational improvement.

Nope, plenty of complex tasks. It's just not that much better, it's equivalent to sonnet with a good harness.

Combine that with it forcing to pay by tokens on June 22nd

I haven’t seen fable do anything significantly better than I can already do with codex 5.5 xhigh. It’s virtually u limited for now for me for $200/month. Seems like a steal while it lasts. Paying by api keys now is not the way to go if you can avoid it. Obviously it isn’t for every use case.