You can just ask io_uring what commands you have available to you. Though the way of the background thread should be readily available/usable by just indirectly

You can just ask io_uring what commands you have available to you. Though the way of the background thread should be readily available/usable by just indirectly calling the syscall (-helper) and replacing it with a futex-based handshake/wrapper. If you're not using the backend-ordering-imposing link bit, you could probably even use minor futex trickery to dispatch multiple background threads to snatch up from the submission queue in a "grab one at a time" fashion.