Merkuro was written in the programming language Java. It will run under any operating system in which the Java Runtime Environment (version 6) is installed.

Merkuro supports the XMPP messaging protocol (eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol), also known as Jabber.

Jabber is a project, started in 1998, to develop an open messaging protocol and server software. The protocol later became XMPP, which is supported not only at jabber.org, but also by Google Talk and other commercial services.

Merkuro uses an open source class library called Smack (Smack API 3.1.0), to handle client-server communication via XMPP. Smack is a pure Java class library, which is supported and developed by the internet community at Ignite Realtime. Smack is used according to the conditions of the Apache License, version 2.