The paper presents a new framework for autonomous agents that is based on the concept of anticipatory systems. It is a hybrid approach that synthesizes low level reactive behavior and high level symbolic reasoning. According to this framework, an agent, i.e. an anticipatory agent, consists of three main entities: a reactive system, a world model, and a meta level component. The world model should, in addition to the description of the agent's environment, also include a description of the reactive part of the agent. The basic idea is that the meta level component makes use of the world model to make predictions of future states. These predictions are then used by the meta level to guide the agent's behavior on a high level, whereas the low level behavior is controlled by the reactive component.