The rational agent community uses Michael Bratman's planning theory of intention as its theoretical foundation for the development of its agentoriented BDI languages. We present an alternative framework based on situated action and activity theory, combining both BDI and activity-based modeling, to provide a more general agent framework. We describe an activity-based, as opposed to a goal-based, BDI language and agent architecture, and provide an example that shows the flexibility of this language compared to a goal-based language.