Activating triggers while Twitch streaming? Map hotkeys to inactive CA window in bg?

I saw there was a discussion in 2017 about this but there was no answer, they were just hoping it'd be something we can do in the future. Well now it's the future haha!

So my question, I have an animated character that I've successfully set up to work with keyboard triggers (character is too complex to do motion-triggers like turning head to side as I am tracking parallax). I've also successfully brought it into my twitch stream using the workflow Character Animator>NDI Output>OBS>Twitch. And this is amazing that I can live perform while gaming, I really love this feature, it's just like 95% complete, it's almost there! Biggest hangup is triggers, they can only be mapped to keyboard keystrokes, and keyboards only work with active windows. So while I'm gaming (active window), my character's lip sync works beautifully and all motion, but can't do a single trigger because they keyboard doesn't effect Character Animator if the window isn't active.

Has anyone found a workaround? Would a USB connector like Stream Deck work to point those custom macro keys to an active window? If I have a gaming keyboard that already has 2 rows of programmable macro keys can those be mapped to INACTIVE windows? In theory it sounds as simple as giving a shortcut a path to the program it's supposed to activate like "C:\Programs\Here\runthis.exe" but more like some kind of script {input [window/Character Animator.exe]} or something (obviously not a real script lol).

Right now the only solution I have is to run a game in windowed mode, move it slightly off-screen, then undock the triggers/behaviors perform panel to the side and stack vertically, but I have to mouse-over and click for every single trigger, which takes me out of the game once every 5 seconds and while it's funny standing still while being attacked, I don't think it'll entertain for very long on Twitch.

I feel like the streaming capabilities for CA are SO CLOSE on this! But aside from using a 2nd computer just for keyboard & add extra lag through outputting over NDI, I'm not sure what else to try. Would a MIDI controller/keyboard override this? Or would the window still need to be active? That way, it shouldn't conflict with the keyboard since it's sending MIDI, but thinking it still comes back to triggers not working while window is inactive/minimized in the background.