Anthropic's Fable 5 free access expires, credits start at $10/$50 per month

Anthropic's Fable 5 free access expired Sunday July 19 at 11:59 PM PT, with a 40/35/25 community probability split across Opus 5 launch, a fourth extension, or credit-based access. The company chose credits: $10/M for basic usage and $50/M for premium, ending months of generous free-tier access that had already been extended three times. No Opus 5 announcement materialized, leaving a frustrated community speculating on next steps. The move follows Anthropic's broader strategy to monetize its Claude ecosystem, even as it faces mounting competition from Microsoft's Mythos 5 alternative (Project Perception) and ongoing infrastructure cost pressures.

Two other stories dominated July 19: a severe Grok Build data leak and OpenAI's acquisition of Gitpod (rebranded as Ona). AI safety researcher Cereblab discovered that Grok Build was uploading entire user repositories—including SSH keys and password manager databases—to a Google Cloud Storage bucket, even when explicitly instructed not to access files. This raises major security concerns for code-assist tools. Separately, OpenAI acquired Ona (formerly Gitpod) to give Codex persistent cloud agents, leveraging 5 million weekly active users. The acquisition signals OpenAI's push into long-running autonomous coding workflows, directly competing with Anthropic's own code agents.