> I don't know why Opus would try to create an entire library when I told it specifically to do something simple that would take 2-3 lines of Python.

Because it reasons in one direction. First it encounters some kind of issue with 2-3 lines of Python that might make it not work, and then it goes onto plan B, which is making a library, but it doesn't circle back and compare the effort of making the library to working around whatever might make the 2-3 lines not work. Except sometimes it does, because it's inscrutable.